Brexit and Foreign Students in Gravity

Ronald Davies and Lena S. Specht

No 10945, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of Brexit on international student migration. In a structural gravity model, we estimate student migration between 69 countries for counterfactual scenarios in which the United Kingdom leaves the European Union one year before the referendum. This exercise reveals a decrease in exchange students studying in the UK of around 3.8% to 4.9%. While the number of non-EU students to the UK rises, a drop in EU student numbers drives this result. Similarly, 30% to 38% fewer UK students choose to study abroad. The estimated changes in international student stocks show that most other member countries lose international students and non-EU countries host more than without Brexit. Our findings provide evidence that there may be hidden costs to Brexit affecting global student exchanges that we have yet to see.

Keywords: international migration; international students; gravity model; Brexit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I28 J11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eec, nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10945.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Brexit and foreign students in gravity (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().