The goal of this dissertation is to investigate how geographic, socioeconomic, andindustrial factors impact and interact with Latino and Latino immigrant business owners in the United States. Further, this dissertation seeks to investigate the impact of Latino business owners on local economic performance. Essay 1 employs decennial Census Bureau data from cities of 10,000 or more to examine the impact of immigrants in American cities on self-employment and median income. The essay examines the relationships using pooled ordinary least squares and generalized method of moments estimators. The results show that self-employment has a statistically significant and positive impact on median income and immigrant population. When controlling for race populations, lagged immigrant population has a negative impact on self- employment, but removing the Hispanic control causes this relationship to become statistically insignificant. In other words, Hispanics, not other ethnicities, drive much of the self- employment in U.S. cities. The implication is that more attention to helping Hispanic business owners succeed and expand their businesses could benefit the general population of a city through median income growth.Essay 2 employs the Michigan Census Research Data Center to merge three limited-access Census Bureau data sets by individual firm and establishment level to investigate the factors associated with the Latino-owned Business (LOB) location and dynamics over time. The three main LOB outcomes under analysis are as follows: (1) the probability of a business being Latino-owned as opposed to a business being Asian-owned, Black-owned, or White-owned; (2) the probability of new business entry and exit; and (3) LOB employment growth. This paper then compares these factors associated with LOB with past findings on businesses that are Asian- owned, Black-owned, and White-owned. Some notable findings include: (1) only Black business owners are less associated with using personal savings as start-up capital than Latinos; (2) the only significant coefficient on start-up capital source is personal savings and it increases the odds of survival of a Latino business by 4%; (3) on average, having Puerto Rican ancestry decreases the odds of business survival; and (4) LOB are relatively likely to start a business with a small amount of capital, which, in turn, limits their future growth.Essay 3 also takes advantage of the Michigan Census Research Data Center to merge limited-access Census Bureau data with county level information to investigate the impact of Latino-owned business (LOB) employment share on local economic performance measures, namely per capita income, employment, poverty, and population growth. Beginning with OLS and then moving to the Spatial Durbin Model, this paper shows the impact of LOB overall employment share is insignificant. When decomposed into various industries, however, LOB employment share does have a significant impact on economic performance measures. Significance varies by industry, but the results support a divide in the impact of LOB employment share in low and high-barrier industries.
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