Thread by @rod_coliveira

🚨NEW WORKING PAPER 🚨

The impacts of studying abroad: Evidence from a government-sponsored scholarship program in Brazil

with Otavio Conceição and André Portela Souza

@UNUWIDER @fgv_clear @EconomiaGV

#CienciaSemFronteiras

wider.unu.edu/publication/im… 🧶⬇️ 1/n

This paper studies the impact of the Science without Borders (Ciência sem Fronteiras - CSF) program on participants' post-graduation enrollment, employment, and entrepreneurship. Our main results suggest that the program did not achieve its main goals. 2/n

Before the thread, a disclaimer. We know that the program raises different sentiments among Brazilians, which can be exacerbated by political preferences. We want to avoid that. We think study abroad programs are important, but as a public policy, it requires proper execution 3/n

Our paper has 3 main contributions. First, we create a novel data set by linking 17 public and non-public administrative registries. Our rich data set allows us to track students up to eight years after they apply to the program. 4/n

Second, this is the first paper to estimate the causal impact of a study-abroad program on post-graduation enrollment, formal employment, and entrepreneurship.

Third, this is the first paper to investigate the causal effect of a study abroad program on a developing country. 5/n

The program was launched in 2011 to increase students' human capital and interest in science and postgraduate education studies through a substantial increase in scholarships for Brazilians to carry out part of their undergraduate studies abroad. gov.br/cnpq/pt-br/ace… 6/n

It had very large numbers. 90000 scholarships in 4 years, costing USD 2.72 billion. This represents 5x the average cost to maintain a student in a public uni p/year & equivalent to the cost of a school meal program that benefits 39 million students
7/n

Our identification strategy leverages the competitiveness of different calls to the program. Therefore, our complier is the approved student in a less competitive call, which would not be approved in a more competitive call, for the same country and year. 8/n

Again, our main results suggest that the program did not increase post-graduation enrollment in Brazil, formal employment, and entrepreneurship. 9/n

Using detailed UFBA detailed. We show that UFBA students who benefited from the program are more likely to graduate, but they take more time to do so. Therefore, delayed graduation can partially explain the findings by delaying student exposure to the labor market. 10/n

Finally, although we cannot rule out that students moved to a foreign country after the program, we show that the likelihood of this event may have decreased over time. We have some reasons to expect that Brain Drain it is not a big problem in our setting. n/n