Graduation Year

2018

Date of Submission

4-2018

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Heather Antecol

Reader 2

Oana Tocoian

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

Tyler D Dean

Abstract

Although researchers have determined that immigrants are valuable to our society and produced several studies that seek to explain immigrant benefits, little has been done to study whether or not immigrant-founded firms outperform native firms. This report determines whether or not immigrant entrepreneurs are good investments from societal, financial and market perspectives. It analyzes the impact of immigrant founders on 2017 Fortune 500 company performance from a societal, investment and market perspectives. To compile the data set, it utilizes immigration classification from the Center for American Entrepreneurship’s report on 2017 Fortune 500 company founders as a means of categorizing firm immigration status. In order to be included in the sample, there were several requirements: firms had to have a publicly listed security with a Capital IQ identification ID. These criteria resulted in 463 firms. Financial performance and innovation data were gathered through Capital IQ.

The analysis seeks to prove or disprove immigrant impact on performance in three categories. The first category, social impact, determined whether or not immigrant-founded firms are good societal investments. The second category, financial impact, determined whether or not immigrant-founded firms are good financial investments. The final category, market stability, determined whether or not immigrant-founded firms are good for overall market stability.

There were no statistically significant results for the dependent variables that were regressed. The was a range of R Values, regressions we run with both robust precision adjustments, and Winsor control methods were tested to no avail. This leads to the conclusion that immigrant-founded firms are not better investments than native founded firms at the Fortune 500 level. This held true in all models for each of the 3 theses compiled.

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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