UNU-MERIT Working Papers Series
Local Gains from Global Minds: The Impact of Collaborating with Foreign-Educated Researchers on Non-Mobile Researchers’ Performance
Rodrigo Ito, Fabiana Visentin, Robin Cowan, Diego Chavarro & Tommaso Ciarli #2025-025Foreign-educated researchers who cross national borders for training can play an important role in contributing to research in their country of origin. Relying on a unique dataset of Colombian researchers, our study explores how researchers with Ph.D. training abroad affect the performance of researchers who do not work or study abroad (non-mobile researchers) through direct collaboration. Combining Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences estimations, we find that non-mobile researchers who co-author with foreign-educated researchers experience a significant improvement in their research performance. Co-authoring boosts the number of publications, citations, publications in top journals, and the share of publications in English. Interestingly, the extent of these improvements differs across scientific macro fields.
Keywords: International Scientific Mobility; Co-authorship; Colombia.
JEL codes: O15, O3, 054
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53330/TMWR8460
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