Top Talent, Elite colleges, and Migration: Evidence from the Indian Institutes of Technology

Prithwiraj Choudhury; Ina Ganguli; Patrick Gaule

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103120

Top Talent, Elite colleges, and Migration: Evidence from the Indian Institutes of Technology

Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule

School of Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of migration after students complete college: among the top 1000 scorers on the exam, 36% have migrated abroad, rising to 62% for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.

Original language	English
Article number	103120
Journal	Journal of Development Economics
Volume	164
Early online date	2 Jun 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103120
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2023

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title = "Top Talent, Elite colleges, and Migration: Evidence from the Indian Institutes of Technology",

abstract = "We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of migration after students complete college: among the top 1000 scorers on the exam, 36% have migrated abroad, rising to 62% for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.",

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AU - Choudhury, Prithwiraj

AU - Ganguli, Ina

AU - Gaule, Patrick

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Y1 - 2023/9/1

N2 - We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of migration after students complete college: among the top 1000 scorers on the exam, 36% have migrated abroad, rising to 62% for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.

AB - We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of migration after students complete college: among the top 1000 scorers on the exam, 36% have migrated abroad, rising to 62% for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.

U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103120

DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103120

M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

SN - 0304-3878

VL - 164

JO - Journal of Development Economics

JF - Journal of Development Economics

M1 - 103120

ER -

Top Talent, Elite colleges, and Migration: Evidence from the Indian Institutes of Technology

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