Local gains from global minds : the impact of collaborating with foreign-educated researchers on non-mobile researchers’ performance

Foreign-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.