Risky Business

The swine flu outbreak has given immigration opponents a new threat to harp upon as a reason to close the borders.

It's quite debatable we should even count the swine flu as a cost of an open immigration policy (which, to be clear, the US does not have). But I'll let other people carry on that debate. Instead, I'd like to point to more empirical evidence about the benefits more immigration brings to the American entrepreneurial sector. (See previous evidence here.)

The National Bureau of Economic Research has a new working paper by Jennifer Hunt, an economist at McGill University.

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I show that immigrants who originally entered the United States on temporary work visas or on student/trainee visas... are more likely than natives to start a successful company, suggesting that immigrants have a niche in startups based on technical knowledge from master's and doctoral degrees.

We often hear about immigrants "taking jobs" form Americans, but rarely do we hear about the jobs they create.

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Via Marginal Revolution, check out this list of the 10 most influential movies of the last ten years.  I could quibble with some entries on this list--Coraline, for example, came out just a few months ago, so it seems more than a bit premature to talk about its influence. But overall, this list does seem to get at the origins of some of the imagery, narrative structures, and plot devices that we see over and over in recent films.

While the list has some big blockbusters like The Matrix, and some critical successes like Traffic, it has at least one movie that I recall being generally panned upon release (Polar Express), and even one that was not an outright bomb--2004's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. It only grossed $57 million worldwide, with a $70 million budget. But its influence has been undeniable, and has led to major commercial success--for other people. The idea of making a movie with the actors being the only "real" component, and computer-generating the rest, was first seen in Sky Captain, but (arguably) perfected in Sin City and Zack Snyder's 300, the latter of which grossed almost $500 million.

So what does this have to do with entrepreneurship?

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Here’s one of those stories that’s so good I kick myself for not writing it.

With the auto companies like zombies (except thriving on bailout money instead of braaiinnsss), what's the Steel Belt to do? The politicians behind the bailout of the Big Three say we need to rejuvenate the auto and manufacturing jobs. But, as NPR reports, some entrepreneurs are trying to take Michigan's economy in a new direction.

Without the federal government propping up the auto companies, job losses would be even more massive in Michigan. So the local economy can't survive without the help, right? But, as this report shows, even in the recession, new businesses are popping up to replace the old.

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Better-than-expected economic news as of late might be lifting the spirits of U.S. small businesses. This month's Discover Small Business Watch survey has the highest number of small-business owners expressing confidence about the economy its had in 14 months.

That number doubled over the course of just one month, from 16 percent to 32 percent. The survey's index of overall conditions also increased, up to its highest level since February 2008.

But despite the mostly good news, the survey also saw a slight increase in the number of business owners who rate the economy as fair or poor, up to 91 percent.

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