The impact of immigrant business ownership on international trade / by Douwere Grekou and Huju Liu, Loretta Fung.: CS11-0019/426E-PDF

"Understanding the impact of immigrants on international trade is particularly important for Canada, as it is a small open economy with a relatively large immigrant population. This paper empirically investigates the effect of immigrant business ownership on international trade in Canada using a newly developed firm-level database with detailed business ownership and trade information. The new data make it possible to better distinguish between the effect immigrants have on reducing information costs and on product demand, and to assess the impact of immigrant business ownership on the extensive and intensive margins of international trade. The results show that although the effect of immigrant business ownership on international trade with all partner regions is either insignificant or small on average, immigrant-owned firms have a positive and significant effect on Canada’s trade with the regions of origin of immigrant owners. Compared with Canadian-owned firms, immigrant-owned firms in the manufacturing sector have, on average, a higher probability of importing from (by 6.7 percentage points) and exporting to (by 2.1 percentage points) the immigrant owners’ regions of origin, ceteris paribus. Also, conditional on being importers or exporters, immigrant-owned firms have stronger trade connections with the regions of origin of immigrant owners - as measured by a larger number of products and average value per product imported or exported - than their Canadian-owned counterparts. The impact of immigrant business ownership is even larger in the wholesale trade sector, highlighting the role of immigrants as trade intermediaries. Immigrant owners admitted through the business, skilled labour or provincial nominee classes, and owners with a higher level of education upon arrival, are more likely to have a greater impact on international trade than other immigrant owners"--Abstract, page 5.

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Publication information
Department/Agency Statistics Canada. Analytical Studies Branch.
Title The impact of immigrant business ownership on international trade / by Douwere Grekou and Huju Liu, Loretta Fung.
Series title Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, 1205-9153 ; no. 426
Publication type Series - View Master Record
Language [English]
Other language editions [French]
Format Electronic
Electronic document
Note(s) "May 2019."
Issued also in HTML format.
Issued also in French under title: Incidence de la propriété d’entreprises par les immigrants sur le commerce international.
Includes bibliographical references.
Publishing information [Ottawa] : Statistics Canada = Statistique Canada, 2019.
©2019
Author / Contributor Grekou, Douwere, author.
Fung, Loretta, author.
Liu, Huju, 1977- author.
Description 1 online resource (42 pages) : graphs.
ISBN 9780660307657
Catalogue number
  • CS11-0019/426E-PDF
Departmental catalogue number 11F0019M - No. 426
Subject terms Immigrants
Businesses
International trade
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