The Impact Of The Return Of Global Youth Experts On Scientific Performance

Talent flow is one of the most visible indicators of knowledge transfer,which in turn stimulates the further innovation across institutions.As knowledge-based economy grows globally,the international talent flow has drawn significant attentions from developing countries,who have been seeking for rapid economy growth and bridging the knowledge gap with developed countries.China--the world's largest developing country with increasing investment in science and technology---has focused on attracting academic talents overseas while making policies in science and technology innovations.The Chinese government has recently launched a series of programs called "brain attraction" programs,which effectively promoted the return of Chinese young talents from abroad.Among those programs,the Youth Thousand Talents plan has become an important way to introduce overseas talents,optimize China's talent pattern and enhance the overall scientific basic innovation.Existing literatures systematically analyze the influencing factors of returning talents,but seldom involve the empirical research on the effect of returning talents on their scientific research.First,the return of overseas talents is affected by many factors,and the causal relationship is ambiguous.Second,existing researches still take small sample interview or questionnaire survey as the main research methods,and few researches are based on large sample objective data.What's more,in most studies of observational scientists migrating to the United States,the reverse flow away from the world's knowledge centers provides a unique perspective for this study.Dedicated to the observation of pure causal effects,this study,based on the counterfactual theoretical framework,constructs the treated group and the control group through the coarsed exact matching method(CEM),and stry to overcome endogeneity and selection bias to the greatest extent.On this basis,Difference in differences(DID)model is applied to observe the counter-factual effect of the policy shock.The study's main finding is that China's research environment is conducive to the development of scientists in their early careers.There has been a significant marked increase in the quantity,quality,impact and disruption of scientific research.But after returning home,the number of publications of the scientist as first author was not affected.As for the mechanism selection after returning to China,our research found that the scientific research output of scientists returning to C9 universities and colleges increased significantly in the later period.But the social networks of their Alma maters have not helped scientists increase the number and influence of their publications.Finally,after a pure comparison of the scientific research environment between China and the United States,our study found that the scientific research environment in China is conducive to the career development of young scientists,and has a significant positive effect on the quantity,quality and scientific impact after returning to China.Considering current talent war worldwide,our focus to the international mobility theory,helps Chinese science and technology policy and talent policymakers to respond effectively to the globalization trend of Chinese academic structural change,and establish and improve the corresponding mechanism of introducing talents and cultivate innovative talents,to promote China's scientific and technological research in line with international standards.