哪些因素影响出国留学决策？一项在佛得角开展的实地实验室实验

中文摘要

出国留学移民是增长最快的国际移民流动。然而，来自低收入国家的学生在经济合作与发展组织（OECD）国家的大学学业完成率往往不高，由此引出一个假说：这些移民对其决策的成本与收益了解不足。本研究通过开展一项实地实验室实验检验这一假说，实验中，佛得角即将高中毕业的学生需要就申请赴国外攻读大学作出带有激励的决策。研究结果表明，潜在移民对有关经济资助可得性和大学学业完成率的信息反应强烈。由于受试者的先验信念高估了经济资助的可得性，留学移民在信息不足的情况下迁移后，很可能需要将原本用于学习的时间转用于工作，这很可能损害其学业表现。向潜在移民告知实际留学资助机会的政策预计会减少留学移民流量，但可能提高顺利毕业的比例。

Abstract

Study abroad migration is the fastest growing international migration flow. However, the college completion rates of students from low-income countries are often modest in OECD countries, raising the hypothesis that these migrants are poorly informed about the costs and benefits of their decision. Our work tests this hypothesis by running a lab-in-the-field experiment where graduating high school students in Cape Verde are faced with incentivized decisions to apply for college studies abroad. Our results show that potential migrants react strongly to information about the availability of financial support and about college completion rates. Since subjects’ prior beliefs on availability of financial support are overestimated, it is likely that study migrants need to shift their time from study to work after uninformed migration, which likely harms their scholar performance. Policies that inform potential migrants of actual study funding possibilities should decrease study migration flows but may improve successful graduation.