Researcher Visas and the Retention of Foreign PhD Graduates: Evidence from France

We investigate the effects of the introduction of the first visa scheme for foreign researchers in France (the carte de sejour "scientifique-chercheur") introduced in 1998 on the post-graduation stay rates of foreign-born doctoral graduates at French universities. We build a novel dataset containing all doctoral graduates in STEM disciplines from 1992 to 2002 and their scientific publications. We distinguish between non-EU graduates, to whom the carte de sejour applied, and French or other EU graduates, to whom it did not using a name-based ethnicity analysis. We then assess short- and long-term career stay outcomes using graduates’ post-PhD publication activity and affiliation locations, and identify those who later become doctoral supervisors themselves. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy with repeated cross-sectional cohorts of graduates, we find no meaningful effects of the visa policy. These results are robust across the different career stay outcomes and alternative implementations of our name analysis. We discuss three possible reasons for this lack of impact, and its implications for talent attraction policies in Europe.