Transnational Activities of Immigrant-Owned Firms and Their Performances in the United States

Abstract

Using microdata from the U.S. Survey of Business Owners (SBO) released in 2012, this study examines transnational activities of immigrant-owned businesses in three aspects: whether they export, outsource jobs, and have overseas establishments. Results show that immigrant-owned firms have significantly higher tendency to be involved in transnational economic activities when compared to non-immigrant owned firms. Immigrant firms without transnational activities have significantly smaller size of employees, annual total sales and total payrolls than non-immigrant firms. However, immigrant owned firms with transnational activities fare significantly better than non-immigrant owned firms without transnational activities. These findings speak directly to the long-debated issues concerning different motivations and performance outcomes of immigrant business ownership.