On the Robustness of Brain Drain Estimates

in Annales d'Economie et de Statistique (2010), 97

Recent theoretical studies suggest that migration prospects can raise the ex- pected return to human capital and thus foster education investment at home or, in other words, induce a brain gain. In a ... [more ▼]

Recent theoretical studies suggest that migration prospects can raise the ex- pected return to human capital and thus foster education investment at home or, in other words, induce a brain gain. In a recent paper 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 for- mation in developing countries. We found a positive e¤ect of skilled migration prospects on human capital growth in a cross-section of 127 developing coun- tries, with a short-run elasticity of about 5 percent. In this paper we assess the robustness of our results to the use of alternative brain drain measures, de nitions of human capital, and functional forms. We nd that the results hold using 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 nd a positive e¤ect on youth literacy while the e¤ect on school enrolment depends on the exact functional speci cation chosen. Finally, we nd our resuls to be robust to using the ratio of skilled to unskilled migration rates (instead of just the former) and to controlling for the demoraphic structure of the population. This [less ▲]

Brain Drain and LDC's Growth: winners and losers

in Economic Journal (2007), 118

We present an empirical evaluation of the growth effects of the brain drain for the source countries of migrants. Using recent US data on migration rates by education levels (Carrington and Detragiache ... [more ▼]

We present an empirical evaluation of the growth effects of the brain drain for the source countries of migrants. Using recent US data on migration rates by education levels (Carrington and Detragiache, 1998), we find empirical support for the "beneficial brain drain hypothesis" in a cross-section of 50 developing countries. At the country-level, we find that most countries combining low levels of human capital and low migration rates of skilled workers tend to be positively affected by the brain drain. By contrast, the brain drain appears to have negative growth effects in countries where the migration rate of the highly educated is above 20% and/or where the proportion of people with higher education is above 5%. While the number of winners is smaller, these include nearly 80% of the total population of the sample. [less ▲]