Replication Package: Self-employment and Migration 1991-2018

There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities so as to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may in fact be more likely to migrate. The "Self-employment and Migration", World Development study conducted two sets of analysis: 1) It put together panel surveys from 8 countries to look descriptively at the relationship between self-employment and migration; 2) It re-analyzed 7 randomized experiments that increased self-employment to look at their impacts on migration.