Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Legislator Attention: Field Experiment
Prof. Yun HOU
Assistant Professor
Information and Policy for Entrepreneurship Thrust
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
Date: 9 December 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 10:30-12:00
Venue: E22-G015
Host: Prof. Tianyou HU, Assistant Professor in Management
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship status and political clientelism on attracting attention from state legislators—key public resource providers. We investigate not only whether immigrant status and political constituency affect attention received from legislators but also the conditions under which nonimmigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to receive attention than immigrant entrepreneurs. To answer these questions, we conducted a field experiment with 6,734 state legislators across the US. Each legislator received an email with identical content from an entrepreneur asking for help with hiring. We randomized entrepreneurs’ immigrant status (1st or 3rd Generation American) and political constituency (inside or outside the legislator’s constituency). Thus, we randomly assigned legislators to one of the four groups in a 2×2 between-subjects design: (a) Arm 1: 3rd Generation American Inside Legislator Constituency, (b) Arm 2: 3rd Generation American Outside Legislator Constituency, (c) Arm 3: 1st Generation American Inside Legislator Constituency, (d) Arm 4: 1st Generation American Outside Legislator Constituency. Our results show that state legislators allocate their attention unequally: reply rates for immigrant entrepreneurs (1st Generation American) are substantially lower than for nonimmigrant entrepreneurs (3rd Generation American). Importantly, our findings suggest the role of political clientelism. Specifically, we find that the difference between legislator reply rates for immigrant and nonimmigrant entrepreneurs is higher within the legislators’ constituency but negligible outside it. The relative difference is larger for Republican legislators and smaller in states with more immigrant eligible voters.
Speaker
Prof. Yun HOU is an Assistant Professor at the Information and Policy for Entrepreneurship (IPE) Thrust at HKUST (GZ). She received her Ph.D. in Management from the National University of Singapore and holds degrees in Economics and Management from Peking University. Her research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology strategy. Her recent research examines how institutional environments (patent law, geopolitical tensions, and environmental regulations) affect innovation using quasi-experimental methods, and how entrepreneurs adjust to bias in experimental settings.
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