Return or stay? impact of reverse brain drain

Abstract

This study examines the impact of the Youth Thousand Talents Plan (YTTP), a Chinese policy to combat brain drain, on the research performance of the award recipients. China has suffered from a lack of high-skilled talent since the Open Door Policy in the 1970s and has thus implemented the YTTP to alleviate this trend by attracting young high-skilled workers in the STEM fields. To estimate the program’s impact, I collected novel data on 1,116 YTTP awardees, covering five waves (2011–2013), and matched them with their publication metrics on Google Scholar. I then analyze the dataset employing a difference-in-differences strategy. The findings show that accepting the YTTP and returning to China decreased the number of publications authored by the awardees by 13.5%. However, there are also some notable heterogenous effects: the results also suggest that the YTTP increased the research performance of female awardees and the number of publications in materials engineering. These findings have three important policy implications. First, the Chinese government should implement countermeasures to support its reverse brain drain policy. Second, the government should consider increasing the number of female high-skilled workers selected for the program. Third, prioritizing certain fields, such as materials engineering, may be useful.