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...

Ability drain's (AD) impact on host countries is significant: 30 percent of US Nobel laureates since 1906 are immigrants, and they or their children founded 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies. However, while brain drain (BD) and gain (BG) have been studied extensively, AD has not. I examine...

High-skilled workers are four times more likely to migrate than low-skilled workers. This skill bias in migration - often called brain drain - has been at the center of a heated debate about the welfare consequences of emigration from developing countries. In this paper, we provide a global...

Discussions of high-skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries, which ignore movements to and between developing countries. This paper presents, for the first time, a global overview of human capital mobility through bilateral migration stocks by...

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...

A unique survey which tracks worldwide the best and brightest academic performers from three Pacific countries is used to assess the extent of emigration and return migration among the very highly skilled, and to analyze, at the microeconomic level, the determinants of these migration choices....

Brain drain has long been a common concern for migrant-sending countries, particularly for small countries where high-skilled emigration rates are highest. However, while economic theory suggests a number of possible benefits, in addition to costs, from skilled emigration, the evidence base on...

Economic reasons along with cultural affinities and the existence of networks have been the main determinants explaining migration flows between home and host countries. This paper reconsiders these approaches combined with the gravity model and empirically tests the hypothesis that ex-colonial...