Necessity Entrepreneurship: A Latin American Study

In 2007, 20.7 percent of all the businesses in the state of Texas were owned by Hispanic entrepreneurs (Echeverri-Carroll & Kellison, 2012). There was a 40.2 percent increase (in five years) in the number of Hispanic owned businesses in Texas. The figure went from 319,340 in 2002 to 447,589 in 2007 (Echeverri-Carrol & Kellison, 2012). The recent US census revealed that the Hispanic-American population in the United States will grow three times faster than any other ethnic group over the next 20 years (Roberts, 2013). This rapid growth will very likely affect the American economy as immigrants are nearly twice as likely to create new businesses (Herman & Smith, 2010). The causes for this early entrepreneurship activity include both a home country culture which supports entrepreneurship activity and conditions in the United States which both encourage and necessitate the creation of new ventures. This study will examine both the causes for immigrant entrepreneurship activities and the barriers, especially the institutional barriers, faced by immigrants from Latin American countries.

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