Rural Return Migration for Entrepreneurship and County Economic Development: A Study Based on the Pilot Policy for Return Migration Entrepreneurship

The return of migrant workers to start businesses is an important means for optimizing resource allocation and effectively enhancing the return of urban resources to the county. This is also an important path for the economic development of the county. This study uses the county-level panel data of 2060 counties in 31 provinces of China from 2007 to 2023, and employs the multi-time-point difference-in-differences method to examine the impact and mechanism of the pilot policies for migrant workers’ return to start businesses on the economic development of the county. The study finds that the benchmark regression indicates that the pilot policies for migrant workers’ return to start businesses can significantly improve the economic development level of the county. This result remains valid after a series of robustness tests. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of the pilot policies for migrant workers’ return to start businesses on economic development has a gradient feature of “the strongest in the east, followed by the west, and not significant in the central region”. The mechanism analysis indicates that the pilot policies for migrant workers’ return to start businesses can promote economic development by promoting local real industries. Innovation level, industrial scale, and industrial structure level can all effectively promote the economic development of the county. The research conclusion of this article provides important empirical evidence for optimizing the policies for migrant workers’ return to start businesses and promoting the economic development of the county.