Ethnic entrepreneurship in core-periphery geographies of the late-19th United States

Robert Boyd, "Retail and wholesale enterprise among ethnic groups in core and peripheral urban centers:  the late-nineteenth-century United States," Urban Geography 25 (2014): 3

The take-away: Regarding the late 19^th-century United States, this article uses census data to study geographic relationships between retailers and wholesalers of the same ethnicity.

Abstract: Ethnic entrepreneurs often benefit from reciprocal relationships, such as buyer–supplier  linkages, among co-ethnic businesses. The present study extends this insight, analyzing census data on the relationship between ethnic enterprise in the retail trade and co-ethnic  enterprise in the wholesale trade in urban centers of core and peripheral regions of the  late-nineteenth-century United States. As expected, this relationship varied markedly by  ethnicity and region. For some groups (e.g., Russians), co-ethnic retail and wholesale  enterprises were positively related on the periphery but not in the core; conversely, for  other groups (e.g., Irish), co-ethnic retail and wholesale enterprises were positively related  in the core but not on the periphery. The results imply that reciprocal relationships among  co-ethnic businesses are significantly affected by variation in the characteristics of local  opportunity structures across urban-regional locations.

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