Job Market Paper

Immigration Status and International Students' Choice of Major (.pdf)

How important is the possibility of obtaining legal immigration status to international students' choice of major? A U.S. immigration reform in 2012 expanded the STEM Designated Degree Program list and made international students with a degree in those new STEM majors more likely to get a work visa . Using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), I examine the impact of this reform on international students' choice of major. I find that the reform increased the probability of choosing a new STEM major for international students by 37%. This suggests that the opportunity to work in the U.S. is an important determinant of international students' choice of major.

Working Paper

Are Better Educated Adult Children more Likely to Migrate away from Parents? Evidence from China Family Panel Studies (R&R at Applied Economics) (.pdf)

This paper examines the casual impact of education attainment of adult children on their likelihood to migrate away from their parents by exploiting the geographical and temporal variations in the implementation of compulsory education law in China. Using the data from China Family Panel Studies, I find that education leads to the higher likelihood for adult child to migrate away from their parents to another household, county, city and province. Exploring the underlying pathways of this result, I also find that education leads to more distant migration and migration to places with better education resources and labor markets, which I interpret as potential mechanisms of the main findings. Still, parents’ well-being is still of better-educated people’s concern that they would only be more likely to migrate if any of their sibling(s) lives with the parents as they could provide in-person support and care.

Work in Progress

The impact of the eligibity of in-state tuition on undocumented immigrants' migration decision