The Determinants of Student Cross-Border Migration: An Applied Microeconomic Analysis

This dissertation examines two determinants of international student mobility, leveraging exogenous variation from quasi-experimental events to shed light on how students choose where to study. The first chapter estimates the impact of a shared bilateral education system on the location choice of international students. To analyze this, a two-way fixed effect model is derived from a conventional random utility maximization framework for optimal location choice. The model suggests that the harmonization of the education system across countries enhances student mobility between nations by reducing immigration costs. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences model, I find that on average, when two member countries have implemented the reform, the origin country experiences an increase in the outflow of students to the destination country by approximately 35.3%. These results provide compelling evidence that the implementation of a standardized tertiary education system successfully accomplishes the objective of enhancing student mobility, as outlined by the Bologna Process. The second chapter evaluates the effect of imposing tuition fees in Sweden on the location decision of international university students. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences model, I compare non-Swedish EEA students, who are not affected by the policy, to students from a set of developed countries who face this rise in tuition costs over a period of 17 years. I find that, on average, a decrease of 140 students per country of origin, which corresponds to approximately 98% of the average number of students from Non EEA developed countries studying in Sweden, and the effect is stable over time. Additionally, I find weak evidence that fewer foreign students impact the decision of Swedish students to study abroad in the short run.