Permanent residency policy and skilled immigration: Evidence from a Swedish reform

Akib Khan () and Erik Lundberg ()
Additional contact information
Akib Khan: Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics
Erik Lundberg: Department of Economics, Uppsala University

No 2026:15, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: Aging populations and labor shortages in skill-intensive sectors have led many countries to pursue targeted policies to attract international talent. We study a migration reform in Sweden that offered international doctoral students from outside the EU an easier path to permanent residency. Implemented in 2014, the reform shortened the required period of residence from eight to four years, allowed these students to obtain permanent residency immediately after graduation, and granted their spouses a work permit during their doctoral studies. Using the European students as a comparison group in a difference-in-differences design, we find that the treated international students are 10.5 pp (18%) more likely to stay in Sweden three years after graduation. Higher settlement prospects also increase their language investments and marriage rates during the PhD. These effects are larger for cohorts that have longer exposure to the reform and for those who carry out their doctoral research in STEM. In addition, the reform raises both employment and language investments among the partners of the treated international students. Taken together, the policy increases permanent residency among international graduates as well as leads them and their families to make long-term choices conducive to integration. Finally, using a shift-share design, where we combine the reform with the pre-existing variation in the share of international students across research fields, we find positive peer effects on residency. More international students settling in Sweden increases the probability of their European peers making the same choice.

Keywords: permanent residency; skilled immigration; international doctoral students; language acquisition; family formation; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I23 J12 J24 J61 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 94 pages
Date: 2026-08-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifau.se/globalassets/pdf/se/2026/wp-20 ... a-swedish-reform.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:hhs:ifauwp:2026_015

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy IFAU, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Malin Lindkvist ().