Transnational ties and performance of immigrant entrepreneurs: the role of home-country conditions

This study contributes to the recent empirical literature on the performance of transnational immigrants’ firms by investigating the effect of transnational ties on the firm’s growth. In addition to the effect of the ties, the paper shows that home country’s institutional and socio-economic characteristics and country-specific entrepreneurial factors have a crucial role in shaping the ties–performance relationship. The evidence from a sample of immigrant-owned firms in the Italian information and communications technology (ICT) sector in the period 2000–2010 confirmed the relevance of the proposed model and helped in understanding a potential channel of improvements in immigrant firms’ performance through transnational ties. Our results show the limited relevance of a direct, or linear, impact of ties on the growth of sales in immigrant-run firms in the ICT sector, but support the crucial moderating role of home-country characteristics on the ties–performance relationship.