International mobility matters: Research collaboration and scientific productivity

In this study, we examine the impact of government-sponsored international mobility on researchers’ scientific collaboration and productivity. To identify causal effects, we use a longitudinal dataset covering internationally mobile doctoral students sponsored by the China Scholarships Council for non-degree studies and non-mobile doctoral students while implementing a combined propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences approach. We find that international mobility has a significantly positive impact on researchers’ scientific collaboration and research output. Our findings suggest that international mobility influences individuals’ research output by increasing the size of collaboration teams. We further find that the effects of international mobility are heterogeneous, that they vary significantly across gender, prestige of doctoral institution, mobility time and destination: male researchers gain more benefits from international mobility in the numbers of collaborators and papers; mobility in early years are more beneficial in increasing collaborators; mobility to Asia and Oceania is most beneficial in improving research quality. These findings provide a deeper understanding of how international mobility shapes researchers’ academic performance and have implications for the policy formulation on government-sponsored international mobility.