The Value of U.S. College Education in Global Labor Markets: Experimental Evidence from China

Mingyu Chen ()
Additional contact information
Mingyu Chen: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Management Science, 2024, vol. 70, issue 2, 1276-1300

Abstract: One million international students study in the United States each year, and the majority of them compete in global labor markets after graduation. I conducted a large-scale field experiment and a companion employer survey to study how employers in China value U.S. college education. I sent more than 27,000 fictitious online applications to business and computer science jobs in China, randomizing the country of college education. I find that U.S.-educated applicants are on average 18% less likely to receive a callback than applicants educated in China, with applicants from very selective U.S. institutions underperforming those from the least selective Chinese institutions. The United States-China callback gap is smaller at high-wage jobs, consistent with employers fearing U.S.-educated applicants have better outside options and would be harder to hire and retain. The gap is also smaller at foreign-owned firms, consistent with Chinese-owned firms knowing less about American education. Controlling for high school quality, test scores, or U.S. work experiences does not attenuate the gap, suggesting that the gap is not driven by employer perceptions of negative selection. A survey of 507 hiring managers at college career fairs finds consistent and additional supporting evidence for the experimental findings.

Keywords: returns to education; international student; return migration; China; correspondence study; choice experiment; sea turtles; hiring decision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4745 (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:inm:ormnsc:v:70:y:2024:i:2:p:1276-1300

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().