International Education and Economic Growth

In recent years international student mobility increased. While net hosting countries are in a better position to win highly educated students for their labour force, they face the additional cost of providing the education. In much of continental Europe these costs are not levied on students, but are borne by the national tax payers, making them an active topic of debate. Borrowing some fundamental equations from the Lucas growth model, this paper addresses the question whether countries benefit from educating international students. We derive conditions under which international education has a positive effect on economic growth, overall and in each specific country. Based on empirically motivated parameter values to calibrate our two-country model we find that international student mobility increases steady state growth for both countries on average by 0.013 percentage points. A small country that is favoured by the inflows of a larger country could experience an extra growth of 0.049 percentage points. The benefits from international education increase when a country tunes its education and migration policy.