Conclusion
This chapter explored the relationship between the formal institutional environments and the social-cultural norms and attitudes toward entrepreneurial activities across nations on one side, and the direction of net migration flows, on the other side.
The purpose is to better understand the modern phenomenon of creative immigrant entrepreneurship. Unlike native entrepreneurs, immigrant entrepreneurs compare and contrast the payoffs to entrepreneurial activity across different national contexts before deciding where to immigrate to start a business. Thus, an alternative comparative-institutional framework of analysis, highlighting the importance of the comparative-institutional context in shaping immigrant entrepreneurship toward productive and innovative activities, is necessary for understanding the phenomenon of creative immigrant entrepreneurship.in a global, comparative-institutional context, the direction of the flows of immigrant entrepreneurs is most likely from national institutional contexts of lower quality to national institutional contexts of higher quality, and from cultures with low praise for entrepreneurs to cultures with high praise and honor for entrepreneurs. Preliminar y data from The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, The World Bank, and The Fraser Institute support the comparative liberty-dignity conjecture advanced in this chapter. Nations with elevated quality of economic institutions and sociocultural and moral support for entrepreneurs exhibit the largest flows of net migrants in general, and proportionately the largest inflows of innovative immigrant entrepreneurs in particular. Moreover, high degrees of dignity and low degrees of economic freedom in the country of origin combined with high degrees of both economic freedom and dignity expected in the countr y of destination has direct implications for the migrant entrepreneurs and the nations that end up hosting (or losing) them. The creative immigrant entrepreneurs will benefit directly from the inclusive institutional and cultural environment of the host country.
The host countries will capitalize on the growth-propelling power of the creative immigrant entrepreneurs. In contrast, the countries of origin will lose the opportunity to capitalize on the creative powers generated by their own citizens.The preliminary evidence supporting my Liberty-Dignity conjecture in this chapter can be inferred by merely looking at the broad data figures. Countries in the top-right corner of Figs. 6.1 and 6.3 tend to receive the most immigrants (positive net migration) and therefore attract a larger share of the global supply of creative immigrant entrepreneurs. Overall, the data support that individuals in developing countries with low levels of liberty and dignity seem to choose to migrate to countries with high levels of liberty and dignity.
To conclude, the allocation of the global supply of creative entrepreneurs is a function of the relative differences across institutional and cultural contexts in the world and the differential payoffs associated with them. In an increasingly open, technologically competitive world, where new ideas matter, a smart strategy for the governments of countries like the United States wishing to attract innovative entrepreneurs is to use the comparative Liberty-Dignity framework to identify and address the competitive strengths and weaknesses in their policies and institutions in a way that turns the balance in the battle for the world's most productive and innovative minds in their favor.