Skilled migration: the perspective of developing countries

The authors focus on the consequences of skilled migration for developing countries. They first present new evidence on the magnitude of migration of skilled workers at the international level and then discuss its direct and indirect effects on human capital formation in developing countries in a unified stylized model. Finally they turn to policy implications, with emphasis on migration and education policy in a context of globalized labor markets.Public Health Promotion,Economic Theory&Research,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Human Migrations&Resettlements,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Economic Theory&Research,International Migration,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Human Migrations&Resettlements,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement

Documenting the brain drain of « la creme de la creme »: Three case-studies on international migration at the upper tail of the education distribution

Most of the recent literature on the effects of the brain drain on source countries consists of theoretical papers and cross-country empirical studies. In this paper we complement the literature through three case studies on very different regional and professional contexts: the African medical brain drain, the exodus of European researchers to the United States, and the contribution of the Indian diaspora to the rise of the IT sector in India. While the three case studies concern the very upper tail of the skill and education distribution, their effects of source countries are contrasted: clearly negative in the case of the exodus of European researchers, clearly positive in the case of the Indian diaspora’s contribution to putting India on the IT global map, and mixed in the case of the medical brain drain out of Africa.Brain drain, international migration, African medical brain drain, European brain drain, Indian diaspora

Measuring Skilled Migration Rates: The Case of Small States

Recent changes in information and communication technologies have contributed to a dramatic increase in the degree of integration and interdependency of countries, markets, and people. Against this background, one aspect of particular concern for small states is the international movement of people. This paper focuses on this particularly important aspect of globalization, with emphasis on the movement of skilled people and its relationship with country size. In addition to overall skilled migration, it provides evidence that controls for migration age in order to distinguish between those educated in the home country and those educated abroad. The authors discuss the growth implications of the brain drain from small countries and policies that may help control it.age structure; aliens; average emigration; average migration; brain; brain drain; brain gain; Census Bureau; Census data; citizen; citizens; citizenship; communication technologies;

Silled migration : the perspectives of developing countries

This chapter focuses on the effects of skilled migration on developing countries. We first present new evidence on the magnitude of the “brain drain” at the international level. Using a stylized model of education investment in a contest of migration, we then survey the theoretical and empirical brain drain literature in a unified framework. Finally we use a particular specification of the model to discuss a number of policy issues from the perspective of developing countries

Skilled Migration and Business Networks

The role of migrants’ networks in promoting cross border investments has been stressed in the literature, possibly making migration and FDI complements rather than substitutes in the long run. In this paper, we estimate the magnitude of such business network externalities in dynamic empirical models of FDI-funded capital accumulation. We use original data on capital and migration stocks rather than flows. Regarding migrants, we distinquish the total and the skilled diasporas abroad. In both cross-sectional and panel frameworks, we find evidence of strong network externalities, mainly associated to the skilled diaspora. These network externalities are stronger for countries exhibiting intermediate corruption index.FD1, Migration, Brain Drain, Network, Diaspo

Fiscal Policy and Educational Attainment in the United States - A Generational Accounting Perspective

In this paper, we investigate the consequences of the rise in educational attainment on the US generational accounts. We build on the 1995 accounts of Gokhale and al. (1999) and disaggregate them per schooling level. We show that low skill newborns are characterized by a negative generational account (-15.4% of their lifetime labor income) whilst medium and high skill newborns have positive accounts (26.8% and 32.3% of their lifetime labor income). Compared to Gokhale et al., our baseline forecast is more optimistic. Nevertheless, the rise in educational attainment is not strong enough to restore the generational balance. The current fiscal policy generates a long-run deficit. Balancing the budget requires increasing taxes (by about 1.2%) or reducing transfers (by about 2.7%). These results are rather robust to growth and discounting assumptions as well as to the treatment of education spending. They are sensitive to assumptions about the schooling level of future generations.Generational accounting Human capital Fiscal policy

Globalization, brain drain and development

This paper reviews four decades of economics research on the brain drain, with a focus on recent contributions and on development issues. We first assess the magnitude, intensity and determinants of the brain drain, showing that brain drain (or high-skill) migration is becoming the dominant pattern of international migration and a major aspect of globalization. We then use a stylized growth model to analyze the various channels through which a brain drain affects the sending countries and review the evidence on these channels. The recent empirical literature shows that high-skill emigration need not deplete a country's human capital stock and can generate positive network externalities. Three case studies are also considered: the African medical brain drain, the recent exodus of European scientists to the United States, and the role of the Indian diaspora in the development of India's IT sector. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for education, immigration, and international taxation policies in a global context.

An Incentive Mechanism to Break the Low-skill Immigration Deadlock

Although movements of capital, goods and services are growing in importance, workers movements are impeded by restrictive policies in rich countries. Such regulations carry substantial economic costs for developing countries, and prevent global inequality from declining. Even if rich countries are averse to global inequality, a single country lacks incentives to welcome additional migrants as it would bear the costs alone while the benefits accrue to all rich states. Aversion to global inequality confers a public good nature to the South-North migration of low-skill workers. We propose an alternative allocation of labor maximizing global welfare subject to the constraints that the rich countries are at least as well off as in the current "nationalist" (or "Nashionalist") situation. This "no regret" allocation can be decentralized by a tax-subsidy scheme which makes people internalize the fact that as soon as a rich country welcomes an additional migrant, global inequalities are reduced, and each citizen in the rich world is better off too. Our model is calibrated using statistics on immigration, working-age population and output. We simulate the proposed scheme on different sets of rich countries.Public Good, Inequality Aversion, Immigration policy

On the robustness of brain gain estimates

Recent theoretical studies suggest that migration prospects can raise the expected return to human capital and thus foster education investment at home or, in other words, induce a brain gain. In a recent paper (Beine, Docquier and Rapoport, Economic Journal, 2008) we used the Docquier and Marfouk (2006) data set on emigration rates by education level to examine the impact of brain drain migration on gross (pre-migration) human capital formation in developing countries. We found a positive effect of skilled migration prospects on human capital growth in a cross-section of 127 developing countries, with an elasticity of about 5 percent. In this paper we assess the robustness of our results to the use of alternative brain drain measures, definitions of human capital, and functional forms. We find that the results hold using the Beine et al. (2007) alternative brain drain measures controlling for whether migrants acquired their skills in the home or in the host country. We also regress other indicators of human capital investment on skilled migration rates and find a positive effect on youth literacy while the effect on school enrolment depends on the exact specification chosen.

International migration, transfers of norms and home country fertility

This paper examines the relationship between international migration and source country fertility. The impact of international migration on source country fertility may have a number of causes, including a transfer of destination countries'fertility norms and an incentive to acquire more education. It provides provide a rigorous test of the diffusion on of fertility norms using original and detailed data on migration. The results provide evidence of a significant transfer of fertility norms from migrants to their country of origin: a one percent decrease in the fertility norm to which migrants are exposed reduces home country fertility by about 0.3 percent for origin countries.Population Policies,Gender and Social Development,Reproductive Health,Human Migrations&Resettlements,Anthropology