International Education and Economic Growth

Jan Bergerhoff (), Lex Borghans, Philipp K. Seegers () and Tom van Veen ()
Additional contact information
Jan Bergerhoff: University of Bonn
Philipp K. Seegers: Maastricht University
Tom van Veen: Maastricht University

No 7354, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In recent years international student mobility increased. While net hosting countries are in a better position to win highly educated students for their labour force, they face the additional cost of providing the education. In much of continental Europe these costs are not levied on students, but are borne by the national tax payers, making them an active topic of debate. Borrowing some fundamental equations from the Lucas growth model, this paper addresses the question whether countries benefit from educating international students. We derive conditions under which international education has a positive effect on economic growth, overall and in each specific country. Based on empirically motivated parameter values to calibrate our two-country model we find that international student mobility increases steady state growth for both countries on average by 0.013 percentage points. A small country that is favoured by the inflows of a larger country could experience an extra growth of 0.049 percentage points. The benefits from international education increase when a country tunes its education and migration policy.

Keywords: economic growth; international education; economics of education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-fdg and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, 2013, 2:3

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7354.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: International education and economic growth (2013)
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:iza:izadps:dp7354

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().