The international policies of brain gain: A review

Policymakers across OECD countries have become increasingly concerned with the national and international debate about brain drain and have launched appraisal processes of the situations in their respective countries. The debates took different turns in different countries, but nevertheless, some common issues cut across a number of countries. The issues of academic structures and traditions, legislation and management, and reputation and image have surfaced as critical factors for brain drain and brain gain. In this paper I provide a systematic analysis of the international policy debates surrounding the issue of brain drain and brain gain and make an attempt to distinguish between them by classifying them into different categories.     

The international policies of brain gain: A review

Policymakers across OECD countries have become increasingly concerned with the national and international debate about brain drain and have launched appraisal processes of the situations in their respective countries. The debates took different turns in different countries, but nevertheless, some common issues cut across a number of countries. The issues of academic structures and traditions, legislation and management, and reputation and image have surfaced as critical factors for brain drain and brain gain. In this paper I provide a systematic analysis of the international policy debates surrounding the issue of brain drain and brain gain and make an attempt to distinguish between them by classifying them into different categories.     

新疆科技人才外流影响因素研究

科技人才的大量流失严重制约了新疆地区的经济社会发展.本文利用新疆科技工作者抽样调查数据,采用二元Logistic模型及对数线性模型对科技工作者流失意愿的影响因素及交互作用进行实证分析.研究结果显示,学历、年龄、职称、政治面貌、生态环境、社会治安、检索科技文献资料难易程度、进修培训工作满意度和科研经费管理制度的满意度对科技人才流失均有显著影响.     

Migration and education subsidies by governments: a game-theoretic analysis

This study is concerned with the implications of the brain drain. "The brain drain alters both the endowments of educated labor and the cost of increasing the endowment of such labor in both countries of immigration and emigration." It thus affects government subsidies for education both directly and indirectly. "This has implications for the burden of education expenditures and net supplies of educated labor in a world with a brain drain. The [author] shows the need for inclusion of a mechanism for transfers between the involved governments if a compensation scheme is to yield Pareto efficient migration."     

Asymmetric information and multi-stage brain drain

In this paper, multi-stage decision procedures associated with the occurence of the brain drain are considered within an asymmetric information framework. Qualitative properties of multi-stage brain drain processes are characterized. Given additional assumptions, some policy implications are also provided through comparative statics analysis.     

What circumstances lead a government to promote brain drain?

This paper aims to complement the existing theoretical brain drain literature, focusing on the interaction between education, skilled emigration and government intervention in a small open economy. This article first characterises different emigration patterns that may arise in equilibrium, then seeks the conditions that lead a government to promote brain-drain. The model shows that the government may promote skilled emigration among workers with intermediate skills even though the resulting brain drain decreases per capita income. Emigrants remittances outweigh the income they would produce if they did not emigrate. Therefore, the government makes less severe the fall in per capita income that follows the brain drain by encouraging emigration among those skilled workers who are more productive abroad.     

Wage Inequality and Human Capital Formation under Migration Possibilities

I examine the problem in the relationship between wage inequality and human capital formation under migration possibilities. Unlike previous analyses, I incorporate the education market and the education price into the analysis, and assume that workers bear the pecuniary cost for receiving education. Given such an assumption, migration possibilities do not necessarily increase education demand since the larger demand for education raises the education price and lowers the net return on education. By modelling an economy where workers in the home country (the labour‐sending country) comprise skilled and unskilled workers and they can migrate to the foreign country (the labour‐receiving country), I show that brain gain and brain drain occur simultaneously in the home country. In particular, if wage inequality is larger in the foreign country than in the home country, skilled workers experience brain gain and unskilled workers experience brain drain in the home country. On the other hand, if wage inequality is sufficiently larger in the home country, brain drain occurs in skilled workers and brain gain in unskilled workers.     

Domestic distortions,imperfect information and the brain drain

An earlier paper by Bhagwati and Hamada (1974) presented a theoretical analysis of the brain drain in the context of wage rigidity and unemployment. This paper extends the analysis by modifying the model to incorporate the phenomena of overqualification, internal diffusion of labor from urban to rural areas and imperfect information about the quality of labor. The welfare effect of the brain drain in the presence of these phenomena is analyzed.     

INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: SKILL TRANSFERENCE THROUGH A REVERSAL OF 'HUMAN CAPITAL FLIGHT' OR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

Abstract.  We examine the issue of technical assistance versus brain drain repatriation as alternative strategies for transferring scarce skills to a skill-poor economy. Technical assistance relies mainly on expatriate skills and labour from the host country, while brain drain repatriation seeks to effect a return of skills that might have been lost in migration. We show that, even in the simplest setting with imperfect information, a surprisingly rich menu of responses is obtained.     

Brain drain and income distribution

In a context in which increased income inequality has raised much concern, and skilled workers move easily across countries, an important question arises: how does the brain drain affect income distribution in the source economy? We address this question and introduce two contributions to the literature on brain drain. First, we present and solve a simple stylized model to study whether and, if so, how the brain drain affects the distribution of income, in a context in which higher education is publicly financed with general taxes. Second, we explore empirically the effect of an increase in skilled emigration on income distribution. A key prediction of our theoretical model is the existence of a non-monotonic relationship between income inequality and emigration of skilled workers. Our empirical data confirm this result, showing a statistically significant inverse U-shaped form.     

中小民营企业人才流失现状及对策研究

中小民营企业占我国企业的绝大多数,在我国经济社会发展过程中扮演着重要角色,是我国经济发展的重要组成部分。近年来,随着人才竞争的加剧,这类企业人才流失现象严重,已成为影响和制约其进一步发展的重要障碍。在借鉴国内外学术界关于人才流动影响因素研究成果的基础上,探讨分析了我国中小民营企业人才流失的现状和成因,提出通过树立以人为本的管理理念,建立公正的用人机制、全方位的激励机制和科学的考评体系,提供充足的发展空间以及加强企业文化建设等措施。增强人才对企业的认同感和归属感,达到减少人才流失和促进企业发展的目的。     

The brain drain, ‘educated unemployment’, human capital formation,and economic betterment1

Extending both the ‘harmful brain drain’ literature and the ‘beneficial brain gain’ literature, this paper analyzes both the negative and the positive impact of migration by skilled individuals in a unified framework. The paper extends the received literature on the ‘harmful brain drain’ by showing that in the short run, international migration can result in ‘educated unemployment’ and overeducation in developing countries, as well as a brain drain from these countries. A simulation suggests that the costs of ‘educated unemployment’ and overeducation can amount to significant losses for the individuals concerned, who may constitute a substantial proportion of the educated individuals. Adopting a dynamic framework, it is then shown that due to the positive externality effect of the prevailing, economy‐wide endowment of human capital on the formation of human capital, a relaxation in migration policy in both the current period and the preceding period can facilitate ‘take‐off’ of a developing country in the current period. Thus, it is suggested that while the migration of some educated individuals may reduce the social welfare of those who stay behind in the short run, it improves it in the long run.     

Do brain drain and poverty result from coordination failures?

The bidirectional causal links between high-skilled emigration and poverty can give rise to multiple equilibria and coordination failures. Two countries sharing identical characteristics may end up in either a “low poverty-low brain drain” equilibrium or in a “high poverty-high brain drain” equilibrium. In this paper, we build a model which endogenizes high-skilled emigration and economic performances in order to derive the conditions under which multiplicity occurs. After identifying country-specific parameters, we find that in the majority of developing countries, the best equilibrium is selected and that the observed brain drain is inevitable. In 22 small developing countries however, the worse equilibrium prevails, implying that poverty and brain drain are increased by coordination failure. These countries require appropriate development policies, such as a temporary subsidization of the repatriation of their high-skilled expatriates. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a brain gain mechanism.     

Return migration, human capital accumulation and the brain drain

In this paper we present a model that explains migrations as decisions that respond to where human capital can be acquired more efficiently, and where the return to human capital is highest. The basic framework is a dynamic Roy model in which a worker possesses two distinct skills that can be augmented by learning by doing. There are different implicit prices, in different countries and different rates of skill accumulation. Our analysis contributes to the literature on the selection of immigrants and return migrants by offering a richer framework that may help to accommodate selection of emigrants and return migrants that are not immediately compatible with the one-dimensional skill model. Our analysis also has implications for the debate on brain drain and brain gain. In the two skills model presented here, return migration can lead to a mitigation of the brain drain, or even the creation of a “brain gain”, where those who return bring the home country augmented local skills.     

The mobility of highly skilled human capital in Taiwan

Most economists agree that a country's economic growth depends on human capital, physical capital, technology, and several other minor inputs. Human capital is the basic wealth of every country. Highly skilled workers are the most important component of human capital. Human capital can have a positive spillover effect on society. When talented young people leave their native country to work elsewhere, this brain drain inhibits the country's economic growth. Several factors contribute to brain drain. These can be classified roughly into three categories: economic, academic and personal. Economic factors play the most important role. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, Taiwan suffered a brain drain when many people who had earned advanced degrees in western countries chose to leave Taiwan to work elsewhere. In this study's statistical analysis, I show that Taiwan's economy is based in past on an effective labour force and explain why Taiwan's economy has grown over the past 30 years. With the improved economy in the 1990s, young people are increasingly choosing to return to or remain in Taiwan to work and live. As Taiwan's economy improves, its highly skilled labour market becomes more competitive.     

人力资本外流与经济增长--对人才外流损失的计量分析

本文在新古典增长模型的基础上,引入人力资本和移民净流出量两个变量,采用比较静态的分析方法,计量分析平衡增长路径上人才外流的收入损失.由于外流人才富含人力资本,根据给定参数计算,即使少量的高素质人才外流,也会带来巨大的经济损失.如果不考虑人力资本的正外部经济效应和国家教育投资损失,仅考虑劳动力和人力资本等生产要素流失所带来的经济损失,根据2002年的数据估算,我国当年的国内生产总值因人才外流就损失约92.2亿元.     

A brain gain with a brain drain

"We study human capital depletion and formation in an economy open to out-migration, as opposed to an economy which is closed. Under the assumption of asymmetric information, the enlarged opportunities and the associated different structure of incentives can give rise to a brain gain in conjunction with a brain drain. Migration by high-skill members of its workforce notwithstanding, the home country can end up with a higher average level of human capital per worker."     

Brain drain,illegal migration and capital exports from less developed economies: a neoclassical approach

This model shows that LDC's brain drain triggers emigration of unskilled labor and capital exports, skilled workers and agricultural capitalists gain, unskilled workers and industrial capitalists lose, and demodernization of the economy results. Demodernization of the economy occurs when labor force and output of the industrial sector decrease, and employment and production in agriculture increase. The problem analyzed in this model is what happens to the incomes of those who are left behind when some of the skilled workers migrate abroad. The results show that with the exodus of both skilled labor and capital, the marginal productivity of unskilled workers in industry also falls below the unskilled wage. Although one would expect a brain drain to result in gains for those skilled workers who remain in the source country, and for the capital owners who receive unskilled workers as a result of emigration, the losers are the unskilled workers and the capitalists in the sector where the migrants worked.     

Efficiency,equality, income taxation and the brain drain: A second-best argument

This note conducts a second-best examination of the effect of the brain drain. If the size distribution of income is a welfare objective, lump-sum taxation is unavailable, and an Atkinson-type optimal income tax is used, it is shown that the opportunity to emigrate will create special difficulties for the LDC policy-maker.