With reference to Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades hypothesis, I examine whether migrants are more likely to be self-employed upon return because of the diverse work experience they gained abroad. The endogeneity between migration, human capital investment, and self-employment is addressed by exploiting exogenous cohort and regional variation in the decision to migrate in the context of Egypt, and parental labour market information. Return migrants’ higher propensity to be self-employed is shown to proceed from participating in significantly more occupations over their work history than non-migrants. In line with Lazear’s framework, estimates confirm that entrepreneurship can be learnt, and that exposure to multiple occupations matters for entrepreneurship.

中文翻译：

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返回移民和自营职业：是否存在“万事通”效应？

参考拉泽尔的万事通假说，我研究了移民是否因为在国外获得了多样化的工作经验而更有可能在回国后成为自雇人士。移民、人力资本投资和自营职业之间的内生性是通过利用埃及背景下移民决定中的外生群体和区域差异以及父母劳动力市场信息来解决的。与非移民相比，返回移民的自营职业倾向更高，这是因为他们在工作历史中参与的职业明显更多。根据 Lazear 的框架，估计证实创业是可以学习的，并且接触多种职业对创业很重要。