Who joins which network, and why?

Social networks—such as alumni networks—affect the productivity of highly educated immigrants through collaboration, knowledge spillover, job referrals, etc. Using online social networking data, we study how international graduate students choose an online identity associated with the “main alumni network” when there are multiple schools attended, but only one alumni network can be selected. We focus on students who receive undergraduate education in China and graduate education in the USA using data from Renren.com, a China-based Facebook-type networking website, on which users can only identify one network among multiple options. We find that pre-migration preferences for Western culture—measured by English-name usage—increase the likelihood of choosing the US school network. Causal inference is based on the design of linguistic instrumental variables for English-name usage. While school prestige should also affect the choice of alumni network, our results highlight the importance of cultural preferences in network choices: The effect of English-name usage is significant regardless of school rankings.