Take Me Home, Country Roads: Return Migration and Platform-Enabled Entrepreneurship
利用中国某省降低返乡门槛的政策实验，发现返乡移民使农村电商业绩提升19%，主要机制是知识转移和需求溢出，为欠发达地区创业提供新思路。
Despite the rise of digital platforms that connect rural entrepreneurs to urban customers, rural online businesses are hampered by a lack of talent. Some have pointed to the potentially enabling role of rural returnees. However, although international returnees bring valuable knowledge to businesses in their home countries, it is unclear how domestic returnees affect entrepreneurship in rural, underdeveloped parts of their country. We study this question using a natural experiment involving a regional policy change, which reduced the barriers for rural migrants to return home in one Chinese province but not in others. We find that, after the policy change, rural e-commerce businesses in the province that implemented the policy change enjoyed a 19% performance gain relative to those in other provinces. We theorize and test four mechanisms that may underlie the relationship between return migration and online entrepreneurship: knowledge transfer, demand spillover, de novo businesses, and financial support from returnees. Our results support the knowledge transfer mechanism, but we also find evidence of demand spillover. This study highlights the salience of return mobility and “return barriers” in shaping local entrepreneurship. It also suggests a novel approach toward fostering entrepreneurship in underdeveloped regions: policymakers and digital platforms may work together to pave the country roads that take people home. History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Migration & Organizations. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.16002 .