Labour Market Returns to Graduates’ International Experience: Exploring Cross-Country Variation in Europe

The potential benefits of increased international experience abound, ranging from enriching cultural understanding to an improvement of language skills and intercultural competence. At the same time, empirical evidence is mixed, particularly with regards to how well international experience translates into individual returns on the labour market. This article examines the association between studying abroad and early labour market outcomes in a comparative perspective aiming to shed light on why labour market returns differ across countries. We expect labour market returns to vary with specific country characteristics such as demand for international experience and competition among graduates at labour market entry. In our empirical analyses, we use data from 13 European countries that provide information on graduates’ early labour market outcomes. We find a large variation in the impact of studying abroad on both wages and attaining a higher service class position. Generally, the labour market returns to international experience are larger in countries in Eastern and Southern Europe with poorer university quality, higher graduate unemployment, and fewer students abroad.