Lunch Seminar Economics (LSE) - 2021/2022
Interviene: Mirko Draca, University of Warwick
Title: Bootstrapping Science? The Impact of a 'Return Human Capital' Policy on Chinese Research Productivity
Authors: Elliott Ash, David Cai, Mirko Draca and Shaoyu Liu
Abstract: We study the impact of a large-scale scientist recruitment program – China’s Junior Thousand Talents program (青年千人计划) – on the productivity of recruited scholars and their local peers in Chinese universities. Using a comprehensive corpus of published scientific articles, we estimate e ects on quantity and quality in a difference in-differences framework. While recruits who returned to China experienced a large boost in productivity. The incumbents at JTTP destination, due to competition for resources, experience a negative spillover effect. They produce around 2% less research output after the arrival of a Junior Thousand Talents recruit, compared to scholars in similar school without an arrival. The negative effect is concentrated in the incumbent scholars who are of a similar seniority with the incoming JTTP scholar.