Do Employers Value Return Migrants? An Experiment on the Returns to Foreign Experience Paolo Abarcar1 University of Michigan April 8, 2015 ***PRELIMINARY: PLEASE DO NOT CITE*** Abstract—Return migration is a potentially important channel through which migrant-sending countries stand to benefit from international migration. Yet to date, its consequences for return migrants and domestic labor markets remain poorly understood. What is the value of return migrants, and the foreign work experience they bring, to domestic employers? I conduct an audit study in the Philippines, sending over 8,000 fictitious resumes in response to online job postings across multiple occupations. Resumes describe typical Filipino job seekers except I randomly assign some to possess varying lengths of foreign work experience. I record callback rates for interviews. I find that employers appear to disfavor return migrants: workers with foreign experience receive 12 percent less callbacks than never-migrants, with callback rates declining for every year spent abroad instead of at home. By varying various aspects of resume job applications, I provide evidence against negative signaling, high expectations for wages, overqualification, and high job turnover rates as primary explanations. Instead, I provide evidence of the importance of location-specific human capital and suggest that its value possibly deteriorates as a worker spends time away from the domestic economy. JEL: O15, F22, J61 1 735 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Email:
[email protected]. I am especially grateful to Dean Yang for his advice. I also thank Brian Jacob, Achyuta Adhvaryu, Jeff Smith, Prachi Jain, Michael Clemens and seminar participants at PacDev 2015 and the University of Michigan’s Development Seminar for helpful comments.