Economic incentives and return migrant scholars: Evidence from a talent recruitment program in China

In global talent flows, developing countries tend to experience large brain drain to developed countries. To strengthen scientific capacity, many countries have initiated programs to attract overseas scientists to return in recent years. This study evaluates the effect of a large-scale talent recruitment program on return migration and scientific productivity in the home country. We focus on the Thousand Young Talents Program in China, the major source country of global talents in this century. We use unique data on institution-, publication-, and citation-based measures for faculty hired between 2000 and 2017 in the top mathematics departments in China. Regression results show that the recruitment program leads to significant increases in hires’ overseas educational background and scientific productivity. The effects of the program are concentrated in universities in the top tier and those located in the economically developed coastal regions. This implies that the recruitment initiative has widened the gaps in hire quality across universities. Somewhat surprisingly, scientific output of incumbents declined after being exposed to returnees, likely due to lack of collaboration. For policy implications, our study suggests that incentive-based talent programs can be an effective tool to turn brain drain into brain gain for developing countries. Furthermore, complementary policies to encourage faculty collaboration could magnify the benefits from return migration to knowledge production in the home country.