The Hesitant Hai Gui: Return-Migration Preferences of U.S.-Educated Chinese Scientists and Engineers

Abstract

Managers, research administrators, and policy makers need a greater understanding of the factors that drive employment preferences of foreign science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral graduates of U.S. universities. To address this need, the authors report the results of a large multischool conjoint survey of return-migration preferences among U.S. STEM doctoral students from China. The survey presents the respondents with potential job offers and yields individual-level estimates of each respondent's indirect utility of a job as a function of location, job status, and salary. The authors use a delayed follow-up choice task to demonstrate stability of the preference estimates both over time and across response modalities. The estimated preferences imply that Chinese doctoral graduates tend to remain in the United States because of a large salary disparity between the two countries rather than because of an inherent preference for locating in the United States. Given these estimated preferences, the authors conduct several policy-relevant, counterfactual simulations of return-migration choice and outline effective targeting and positioning strategy for attracting Chinese STEM talent.