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Although international immigrations' impacts on domestic workers are well studied in the United States, data paucity means most researchers have yet to isolate the specific effects of undocumented immigration. Despite limited empirical evidence, many policymakers presuppose undocumented immigrants adversely impact native workers to justify stringent immigration laws. In this paper, we examine the validity of this supposition, offering two contributions. First, we create annual, state-level estimates of the U.S. undocumented population for the period 1994 to 2010 by emulating a methodology adopted by notable demographers. Second, we incorporate these estimates into a fixed-effect, dynamic model to isolate how undocumented immigrants impact low-skill native labor force participation rates and unemployment rates. Overall, we find the total number of international immigrants has a relatively small impact on both. Omitting undocumented immigrants indicates that documented immigrants alone have no significant impact on natives. However, the effects of undocumented immigrants are themselves statistically indistinguishable from the impact of all immigrants. This suggests that neither immigrant group separately has substantive impacts on low-skill natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We examine the contribution to economic growth of entrepreneurial marketplace information within a regional endogenous growth framework. Entrepreneurs are posited to provide an input to economic growth through the information revealed by their successes and failures. We empirically identify this information source with the regional variation in establishment births and deaths. To account for the potential endogeneity caused by forward-looking entrepreneurs, we utilize instruments based on historic mining activity. We find that the information spillover component of local establishment birth and death rates have significant positive effects on subsequent entrepreneurship and employment growth for U.S. counties and metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars have long emphasized the importance of entrepreneurs to long-term growth prospects, entrepreneurship often receives less attention by policy makers than traditional industrial recruitment efforts as regional growth engines. The effects of entrepreneurship may be more subtle than the latter approaches, but business creation can have significant effects across both space and time. This article first sketches the important relationship between innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth and then empirically assesses the relationship between entrepreneurship and job growth across U.S. labor market areas and counties. Three key findings emerge. First, entrepreneurship is systematically related to job growth; furthermore, this relationship increases in intensity over time. Second, entrepreneurship has the greatest impact on the county in which it occurs but also generates positive spillovers for job growth in neighboring counties. Finally, the impact of entrepreneurship is greater in denser, more urbanized settings where such businesses can leverage the advantages of a thick marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even during periods of moderated national joblessness, certain regions face stubbornly high unemployment. "Rust Belt" areas are often particularly affected and raise the question of whether such labor markets may not clear even in equilibrium. This article examines evidence from a panel data set of West Virginia counties, along with case-study surveys. The combined findings help provide a better understanding of persistent local unemployment, which appears to be due to nonclearing labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]