What matters for the decision to study abroad? A lab-in-the-field experiment in Cape Verde
通过在佛得角对高中毕业生进行实地实验室实验，发现潜在留学生对奖学金信息和毕业率信息反应强烈，但高估了奖学金可得性，可能导致留学后因打工影响学业。
Study abroad migration is the fastest growing international migration flow. However, the college completion rates of students from low-income countries are often modest in OECD countries, raising the hypothesis that these migrants are poorly informed about the costs and benefits of their decision. Our work tests this hypothesis by running a lab-in-the-field experiment where graduating high school students in Cape Verde are faced with incentivized decisions to apply for college studies abroad. Our results show that potential migrants react strongly to information about the availability of financial support and about college completion rates. Since subjects’ prior beliefs on availability of financial support are overestimated, it is likely that study migrants need to shift their time from study to work after uninformed migration, which likely harms their scholar performance. Policies that inform potential migrants of actual study funding possibilities should decrease study migration flows but may improve successful graduation. • Lab-in-the-field experiment with incentivized international study migration decisions • Subjects respond strongly to availability of financial support and college completion rates • Evidence of substantial “foreign bias” defined as a preference to migrate even without income gains • Female students are less responsive than males to increases in college graduation rates abroad • High-ability students are more sensitive to both college graduation rates and scholarship availability