| Abstract: | In most destination countries, immigration policies are tiltedmore and more in favor of skilled individuals. Whether thisshift hurts economic prospects in sending countries, as arguedby the traditional brain drain literature, is somewhat controversial.The most recent literature focuses on the link between skilledoutmigration and educational achievements in the home country.This article emphasizes a different channel. It considers theargument that skilled migrants raise economic welfare at homeby sending a relatively larger flow of remittances. While skilledmigrants typically earn more, and so might be expected to remitmore, they are also likely to spend more time abroad and toreunite with their close family in the host country. These secondtwo factors should be associated with a smaller propensity toremit. Thus, the sign of the impact of the brain drain on totalremittances is an empirical question. A simple model has beendeveloped showing that skilled migrants may indeed have a lowerpropensity to remit from a given flow of earnings. An empiricalequation of remittances is estimated as a measure of the braindrain in developing countries using the Docquier and Marfouk (2004)data set. Evidence is found that the brain drain is associatedwith a smaller propensity to remit. |
