When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, over a million Ukrainian refugees fled to Poland. This column shows that far from displacing local businesses, these refugees sparked an entrepreneurial boom. Ukrainians started nearly 39,000 firms in just two years. In addition, every 10% increase in Ukrainian firm registrations triggered a 2.3% rise in Polish entrepreneurship. Survey data reveal two mechanisms driving this multiplier effect: Ukrainian businesses inspired Polish entrepreneurs to launch similar ventures, and Ukrainian firms created new supply chain opportunities with local partners.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered one of Europe’s largest refugee movements since WWII. Poland alone absorbed around one million Ukrainian refugees within months, on top of a sizeable pre-war Ukrainian migrant community. The speed and scale of this inflow quickly raised a central policy question: would refugees strain Poland’s labour market, public services, and finances, or could they also become a source of economic dynamism?
One underexplored margin is entrepreneurship, a key driver of job creation and productivity growth (Decker et al. 2014). Migrants are often disproportionately entrepreneurial – they start businesses at higher rates than the native-born (Pekkala Kerr and Kerr 2020, Fairlie and Lofstrom 2015), and their firms create more jobs (Azoulay et al. 2022, Jin et al. 2025). But it is unclear whether these patterns extend to refugees (Bahar et al. 2022). What’s more, an open question is whether migrant entrepreneurship crowds out native entrepreneurship (Fairlie and Meyer 2003, Ghimire 2021) or potentially encourages it through exposure (Wallskog 2025, Guiso et al. 2021). As Fairlie and Lofstrom (2015) noted, the contributions of migrant entrepreneurs need to be viewed “through the lens of crowd out”.
In our new paper (Vézina et al. 2025), we tackle these questions in the case of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. We document the post-invasion surge in Ukrainian business creation in Poland and estimate how it affects Polish start-ups, using three complementary data sources: the universe of Polish firm registrations, county-level refugee registry data, and a new survey of Ukrainian business owners.
Using Poland’s business registries, we first document a sharp rise in Ukrainian entrepreneurship after the invasion. In 2022 alone, Ukrainian nationals registered 4,458 limited-liability companies and 10,954 sole proprietorships, about 5% of all new firms created in Poland that year (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Firm registrations with Ukrainian owners in Poland
A) Number of firms registered with Ukrainian owners
B) Share of firms registered with Ukrainian owners
Our original survey of Ukrainian entrepreneurs shows that this surge was largely refugee-driven: 58% of post-invasion Ukrainian founders report arriving as refugees. Combining this share with the registry totals implies that Ukrainians started more than 0.9 firms per 100 adult refugees in 2022, compared with about 0.7 firms per 100 adults among others in Poland – evidence of higher entrepreneurial intensity among refugees. The survey also indicates that many founders brought existing businesses from Ukraine, a pattern we corroborate by matching entrepreneurs’ names to the Ukrainian business registry.
To link refugee inflows to firm creation spatially, we merge firm registrations with county-level refugee settlement data for all 380 Polish counties. Counties receiving larger inflows of adult male refugees experienced significantly more Ukrainian business entry: a 10% increase in adult male refugees is associated with a 2.7% rise in Ukrainian firm registrations in 2022, over and above what pre-war trends and historical migrant networks would predict. While refugees were mostly women and children, we find adult male refugees to be most associated with firm creation. We suggest selection effects as well as higher entrepreneurship rates among Ukrainian men than women may be behind these gender differences.
The key policy issue is not only whether refugees start firms, but what their entry does to native entrepreneurship. One possibility is displacement: refugee-owned businesses may compete with Poles for customers, workers, and premises, discouraging some Polish start-ups. The alternative is complementarity: refugee firms may create supplier and customer linkages, and reveal profitable niches, thereby encouraging Polish entrepreneurs.
To test which force dominates, we use county-by-sector data on new firm registrations and ask: within a given county and industry, does more Ukrainian business entry translate into fewer or more Polish firm creation? Estimating this relationship is not straightforward because both Ukrainian and Polish entrepreneurship could rise together in places or sectors hit by a common demand shock. We therefore use a shift-share instrumental-variables design that combines (1) the uneven post-invasion refugee inflow across counties with (2) Ukrainians’ pre-war sectoral specialisation in Poland. This instrument isolates variation in Ukrainian firm entry driven by refugees’ comparative advantage across industries, while purging contemporaneous local demand shocks.
Our results, when focusing on incorporated firms, suggest that a 10% increase in Ukrainian-owned businesses generates 2.3% additional Polish firms in 2022 (Figure 2). In levels, our estimates suggest that 10 extra Ukrainian firms increase the number of Polish firms by 4.02. This multiplier effect is both statistically significant and economically meaningful. It indicates that refugee entrepreneurs encouraged host-county entrepreneurs to start businesses, instead of simply competing with them.
Figure 2 Multiplier estimates
Why might refugee entrepreneurs boost entrepreneurship by the native-born? Our survey sheds light on two mechanisms.
The first is emulation within sectors. A majority of Ukrainian business owners (59%) report that Polish entrepreneurs started firms similar to theirs after they entered the market. This suggests a ‘learning by observing’ channel whereby visible refugee businesses reveal profitable opportunities or business models that local residents then adapt and replicate.
The second mechanism is supply chain linkages across sectors. Ukrainian firms are deeply integrated into local business networks: in our survey, 88% of owners say their firms sell goods or services to other firms in Poland, and 62% report buying from local firms. When we use Poland’s input–output tables to look for spillovers into upstream and downstream industries, we find suggestive evidence that sectors more exposed to new Ukrainian firms also experience additional Polish firm creation in closely connected sectors.
Taken together, these patterns point to refugee entrepreneurs acting not just as competitors but as catalysts, generating new demand, knowledge, and networks that help local entrepreneurs as well.
Our results point to three takeaways for refugee and entrepreneurship policy. First, refugees can be business multipliers, not just workers. In Poland, Ukrainian firm entry increased Polish start-ups rather than displace them. Second, rights and speed matter. Poland’s rapid grant of work and business rights likely unlocked this entrepreneurship wave; long waiting periods or tight restrictions elsewhere may suppress similar gains. Indeed, this refugee wave was unique in not only in prompting extensive grassroots effort to welcome refugees but also in granting access to Polish social benefits, the right to work legally, and set up businesses under the same conditions as the native-born. Third, start-up frictions should be reduced. Simple online registration, clear guidance, and language support look like low-cost ways to translate refugee inflows into local business dynamism.
Source : VOXeu
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