Is ability drain (AD) economically significant? That immigrants or their children founded over 40% of the Fortune 500 US companies suggests it is. Moreover, brain drain (BD) induces a brain gain (BG). This cannot occur with ability. Nonetheless, while BD has been studied extensively, AD drain...

This paper revisits the question of how brain drain affects the optimal education policy of a developing economy. Our framework of analysis highlights the complementarity between public spending on education and students' efforts to acquire human capital in response to career opportunities at...

We examine how low and high skilled internal emigration causally affect investments in human capital at origin. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence of a disincentive mechanism through which individuals refrain from education should low skilled emigration prove a viable alternative. Our...

Brain drain BD, human capital h, and inequality's institutional impact is examined in a model where a rent-seeking elite taxes residents and voicing affects the likelihood of regime change. We find that BD and h's impact on institutional quality (Q) are as follows: i) Q is a U-shaped function of...

Based on a welfare-maximization model of skilled migration where education generates a positive externality, this paper examines whether the early view regarding brain drain's (BD) negative impact on source countries and the Bhagwati tax (BT) associated with it, is compatible with the recent...

The paper assesses the global effects of brain drain on developing economies and quantifies the relative sizes of various static and dynamic impacts. By constructing a unified generic framework characterized by overlapping-generations dynamics and calibrated to real data, this study incorporates...

Is the brain drain a curse or a boon for developing countries? This paper reviews what is known to date about the magnitude of the brain drain from developing to developed countries, its determinants and the way it affects the well-being of those left behind. First, I present alternative...

A growing number of OECD countries are leaning toward adopting quality-selective immigration policies. The underlying assumption behind such policies is that more skill-selection should raise immigrants' average quality (or education level). This view tends to neglect two important dynamic...

This paper critiques the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research. The study singles out a core assumption underlying much of the recent literature, calling it the Lump of Learning model of...