The Contribution of International Master Students to Entrepreneurship in the World

Michel Beine, Giovanni Peri, Morgan Raux and Lilie Timricht

No 13014, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We provide the first global empirical evidence on the relationship between international master’s education and entrepreneurship. Using large-scale longitudinal data from LinkedIn/Revelio, we document that international master’s graduates are systematically more likely than domestic graduates to create firms across the world’s leading destinations for international students. We further show how this entrepreneurial advantage varies across fields of study, gender, origin and destination countries. In addition, we document the geography of post-graduation firm creation, highlighting the international mobility of entrepreneurial activity among former international students. Taken together, the results offer a new global perspective on the economic impact of international student mobility and the contribution of international master’s graduates to entrepreneurship, innovation, and business dynamism worldwide.

Keywords: foreign students; entrepreneurship; master’s programs; STEM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I23 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp13014.pdf (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:ces:ceswps:_13014

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 ().