Foreign education, culture and corruption - Determinants and consequences of global student flows between 1970 and 2015

Foreign education has been growing constantly for the past decades while research on it has remained scarce. Although research found that migration choices are determined in parts by cultural differences, no study investigated this relationship for foreign education. Therefore, this thesis studies how cultural differences influence bilateral student flows by using a gravity model. Similarly, the consequences of foreign education are scarcely identified, giving rise to the question if foreign education has an impact on the institutional setting of the origin coun-try. To answer this question, this thesis further studies the effect of foreign education on cor-ruption. Using a panel dataset of 206 origin and 157 destination countries over the period 1970-2015, it appears that cultural differences influence student flows positively, although the impact is declining over time. Further, foreign education has the potential to reduce corruption in the country of origin, depending on the corruption level of the destination countries. Simi-larly, the cultural values prevailing in the host countries are related with corruption in the origin country, supporting the hypothesis of this thesis that norms and values are adopted and transferred home