October 1st, 2026
Visa Policy, Global Education and Labor Markets
(Zhangchi Ma, Duke University, Labor and Education)
We study how tightening post-study work visa policy jointly shapes international students' decisions of where to study and where to work. We leverage the 2012 UK visa reform, which abolished a two-year unconditional post-study work visa with the aim of curbing low-skilled stay, to quantify how sensitive Indian master's students' education choices are to labor-market access in the destination country. Using a novel longitudinal panel of LinkedIn profiles, we first document the sharp enrollment and stay-rate decline for UK master's programs after the policy. Applying a difference-in-differences design, we further causally identify the effect of the policy shock on students' enrollments. To interpret this response and separate its channels, we then develop a two-stage dynamic model of education and post-graduation work choices. The model attributes most of the decline in bachelor-degree labor supply to the reform’s direct effect, which also drives a sharp decline in student enrollment and thereby indirectly reduces the supply of advanced-degree foreign workers. Our results highlight how a reform targeting low-skill employment can generate adverse spillovers across skill groups, directly reducing bachelor-degree labor supply and indirectly leading to losses of advanced-degree talent.
October 16th, 2026
Connect or Clique: The Role of Agent Networks in the Housing Market
(Ruiqi Wang, NUS, Economics, Industrial Organization)
TBD
October 23th, 2026
Monetary policy transmissions under the Gold Standard
(Zhongxi Zheng, NUS, Economics, Macro History)
TBD
October 30th, 2026
TBD
(Liaoliang Zhang, NUS, Economics, TBD)
TBD
November 13th, 2026
TBD
(Nuo Lei, NUS, Economics, Development Economics)
TBD