Immigration and the Export Decision to the Home Country

This paper analyzes the effect of immigrants’ networks on the decision of individual firms to starting exporting to the immigrants’ home country. Existing evidence on the trade-creating effect of immigrants show a robust effect, however at the national or regional level. Using French exports at the firm-level to 61 countries, I find that increasing the number of foreign immigrants in the region by 10 % increases the probability that a firm starts exporting to the immigrants’ home country by 1.2%. MOre, the effect of immigrants is enhanced when immigrants are older or more educated. The effect of immigrants also varies among origin countries. J.E.L. classification: F1, R12, L25