Does Student Mobility Affect Trade Flows? New Evidence From Chinese Provinces

This paper investigates the impact and relationship of international students’ inflow with export and import trade based on the panel data of 28 provinces in China from 2000 to 2016. However, due to the remarkable differences in economic and social development across various regions, the characteristics and patterns of international students’ inflow in different Chinese provinces are significantly large. Our study finds that international students’ inflow will promote the development of the host country’s export and import trade. The results show that international students’ inflow is positive and statistically significant in the Fixed Effect (FE) and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation. This paper empirically investigates the impact of international student inflow on China’s export and import trade. However, the impact of export and import trade of different modes have certain regional differences. Our study proposes that the Chinese government should attach greater importance to the role of international students’ inflow to promote import–export trade. In addition, policymaker needs to design effective strategies and policies to promote export trade from less developed regions, and improve the stability of the sustained growth of export and import trade.