Xiaohuan Lan: Green Card, Wage, and Innovation of PhDs

Date:2014-07-25 ClickTimes: Author:

Presenter: Xiaohuan Lan
Affiliation: Research Fellow, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business
Ph.D. in Economics, University of Virginia
4:00-5:30 pm on Wednesday, Nov 14th, 2012
608 Academic Hall, CUFE

Abstract
Visa policies restrict job opportunities and job mobility for U.S.-trained PhDs who hold a temporary visa, a group that accounts for 40% of new PhDs in science and engineering. The Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 unexpectedly granted Chinese students in the U.S. a green card. Many CSPA-beneficiaries did not pursue postdoctoral training and instead entered the public or private sectors, which increased the relative wage of native postdocs to non-postdocs. Four to eight years after graduation, CSPA-beneficiaries earned 9% more than the comparison group, were less likely to work in academia, published fewer research articles, and produced more patents.