We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of migration...

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have emphasized the fact that the prospect of international migration increases the expected returns to skills in poor countries, linking the possibility of migrating (brain drain) with incentives to higher education (brain gain). If emigration is...

We ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare. We find that skill-neutral policies are never optimal. An egalitarian welfare function induces a policy that entails moving mainly unskilled immigrants into the rich countries, whereas a welfare function skewed highly towards the rich...

We consider the welfare effects of the emigration of workers who produce a public good (knowledge). We distinguish between the knowledge diversion and knowledge creation effects of such emigration, and show that the remaining residents of a country can gain from emigration, even when tastes for...

In the first global century before 1914, trade and especially migration had profound effects on both low-wage, labor abundant Europe and the high-wage, labor scarce New World. Those global forces contributed to a reduction in unskilled labor scarcity in the New World and to a rise in unskilled...

This paper analyzes the relationship between brain drain, human capital accumulation and individual net incomes in the presence of a redistributional tax policy, credit market constraints, administrative costs of tax collection, and lack of government commitment. We characterize how decreasing...

This paper reviews recent research regarding high-skilled migration. We adopt a data-driven perspective, bringing together and describing several ongoing research streams that range from the construction of global migration databases, to the legal codification of national policies regarding...

This paper examines the impact of rising U.S.-China geopolitical tensions on three main dimensions of science: STEM trainee mobility between these countries, usage of scientific works between scientists in each country, and scientist productivity in each country. We examine each dimension from a...

On February 5, 1917, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which included a test for all migrants arriving to the U.S. to prove they were literate. The Literacy Test was one of the first and few times the U.S. used a broad 'skill-based' immigration policy in an attempt to limit...

This paper shows that the ancestry composition shaped by century-long immigration to the US can explain the current structure of global supply chain networks. Using an instrumental variable strategy, combined with a novel dataset that links firm-to-firm global supply chain information with a US...