国内移民创业决策的影响研究--基于社会网络和经济集聚的视角

The determinants of in-migration entrepreneurship:From the perspective of social network and economic agglomeration

国内移民创业在中国工业化和城市化进程中起到关键性的作用。本文通过建立移民创业选择模型,研究了社会关系网络与城市经济集聚对移民创业决策的影响机制,并利用2014年中国劳动力动态调查数据进行实证分析,探究不同类型的社会关系网络与不同类型的经济集聚对移民创业决策的影响。研究结果表明:工具型社会关系网络对移民创业决策具有显著正向影响,而情感型社会关系网络对移民创业决策的影响不显著;城市多样化经济集聚对移民“雇主型”创业决策存在显著正向影响,而对移民“自雇型”创业决策的影响不显著;城市专业化经济集聚对移民创业决策的影响不显著。

The process of industrialization and urbanization has generated a massive wave of in-migration in China,with an enormous number of in-migrants moving from rural districts to urban areas and from the developing cities to the developed ones.For some inmigrants,what motivates them to move is the prospect of seeking job opportunities and high salaries,but for others,it could be the chance of exploiting more and better entrepreneurial opportunities in host cities.As migrant entrepreneurs can create new businesses and jobs for the host place,the factors that influence their decisions need to be analyzed.And this has attracted attention from both policy-makers and academics.However,in light of the present literature,it is far underexplored.We thus address the following research question:what factors influence in-migrants’decision to be entrepreneurs at host city in developing countries.Based on Evans and Jovanovic’s model,we build an occupational choice model of in-migrants to choose between entrepreneurship and wage-earning.We assume that the income of a wage-earning job is exogenously given by the labor market in host cities and the earnings of an in-migrant entrepreneur depend on the migrant’s entrepreneurial abilities and entrepreneurial capital.The basic theoretical model predicts that a migrant with more initial endowment and higher entrepreneurial ability is more likely to be an entrepreneur.Two extended models are provided further to examine how migrants’social network and economic agglomeration at city level determine the entrepreneurial decision making of in-migrants.These two models lead to two propositions.The first one is that social networks have significant effects on entrepreneurial decision making of migrants with financial constraints but no impact on those who are financially unconstrained.The second one is that agglomeration economies have a strong impact on entrepreneurial decision making of all migrants through enhancing their entrepreneurial abilities.We use individual-level data from the China Labor Force Dynamics Survey 2014(CLDS2014)and city-level data form the China Urban Statistical Yearbook to examine the effect that social networks at individual-level and economic agglomeration at city-level may exert on entrepreneurial decision making of in-migrants.We define people whose present living places are inconsistent with the places where they lived at the age of 14 as the in-migrants.We define employers as opportunity entrepreneurs and self-employed people as necessity entrepreneurs.We divide the social networks of immigrants into instrumental social networks and emotional social networks,and use immigrants’loan networks and discussion networks to measure them respectively.We classify economic agglomeration into specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration.And we measure the former with the share of the sector with the largest share of employment in the city;we measure the latter by using the reciprocal of the Herfindahl Index(HHI)of employment share in all sectors of a city.We also employ a multivariate Probit model to observe the effect of social network and agglomeration on the entrepreneurial decision making of in-migrants.The results of empirical analysis are consistent with the predictions of theoretical models.First,the instrumental type of social network relationship exerts more profound influences on the entrepreneurial decision making of migrants by providing them with financial capital while the emotional type of social network relationship are uncorrelated with the entrepreneurial decision making of migrants.Inmigrants have credit disadvantages in the formal financial markets of the host place.The instrumental type of social network can offer them borrowing channels for informal finance,which reduces the constraints on entrepreneurial financing,and thus facilitating their choice of entrepreneurship.Second,the diversified economic agglomeration of cities can promote opportunity entrepreneurial decision making of in-migrants.However,it has no significant effect on necessity entrepreneurial decision making of in-migrants.The urban specialized economic agglomeration has no obvious relationship with both types of entrepreneurship.The characteristics of urban economic agglomeration have different effects on opportunity and necessity entrepreneurial choices because the motivations of the two entrepreneurial choices differ.The opportunity entrepreneurship of in-migrants is more proactive as it entails seeking and utilizing opportunities.On the other hand,the necessity entrepreneurship is a survival type of entrepreneurship as the in-migrants are passively self-employed because of their disadvantages in the job market.The above predictions are further verified by the results of the logit model.As China′s urbanization process enters a new stage of development,encouraging immigrants to create a startup has become an important strategic measure for the development of cities.In view of this,our findings have considerable implications for policy makers.On the one hand,the government should actively promote the construction of social relationship networks for in-migrants and reduce the financial constraints of in-migrants;on the other hand,the government should actively build an open,diversified economic cluster with coexistence and development of multiple industries,which will help cross-industry talents and ideas flow,promote the emergence of new ideas and new enterprises,and thus encourage in-migrants to start new businesses.