【主讲人】马张弛
【主持人】高明 长聘副教授
【报告题目】Post-Study Work Visa, Global Graduate Education and Skilled Immigrant Employment

【报告摘要】We study how tightening post-study work visa policy jointly shapes international students' decisions of where to study and where to work. We leverage the 2012 UK visa reform, which abolished a two-year unconditional post-study work visa in an effort to curb visa abuse in low-skilled sectors, to study its impact on international master's students from India, one of the largest source countries. Using a novel panel of longitudinal LinkedIn profiles, we apply the Diff-in-Diff method and identify a significant decline in U.K. master's enrollment from Indian students. We then develop a two-stage dynamic model of education and post-graduation work choices. Based on the model, we decompose the decline in high-skilled retention: 68% is attributable to the direct rise in search and hiring friction for graduate-level jobs, and 32% is due to an indirect deterrence effect on the educational enrollment margin. Our results highlight that a reform targeting low-skilled employment can create negative spillovers, substantially raising high-skilled hiring frictions and reducing the retention of global talent.

【主讲人介绍】Zhangchi Ma (马张弛) is a PhD candidate at Duke University. His primary research interests lie in labor economics, with a particular focus on education economics. He employs a range of empirical methods, including structural estimation, quasi-experimental causal inference, and the collection of subjective expectations data. He received his bachelor's degree from Peking University in 2019.