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...

Immigration officials in rich countries are being asked to become overseas development officials, charged with preventing skilled workers from leaving poor countries, where their skills are needed. Some advocates urge restrictions or taxes on the emigration of doctors and engineers from...

We examine the phenomenon of forsaken schooling resulting from opportunities abroad. The brain-drain/gain literature takes as its starting point the migration of educated/professional labor from poor origin countries to richer host countries. While high-skilled migration is worrisome, many...

Theory suggests that groups historically subject to discrimination, such as Jews, could exhibit traditionally high investment in education because discrimination spurred exit facilitated by human capital. Theory moreover suggests that if exit is uncertain, it could induce investment in skill...

Two of the most salient trends surrounding the issue of migration and development over the last two decades are the large rise in remittances, and an increased flow of skilled migration. However, recent literature based on cross-country regressions has claimed that more educated migrants remit...

Increasingly, immigration policies tend to favour the entry of skilled workers, raising substantial concerns among sending countries. The ‘revisionist’ approach to the analysis of the brain drain holds that such concerns are largely unwarranted. First, sustained migratory flows may be...

Large international earnings differentials negatively impact human capital investments in migrant-origin countries. We find that three Central Asian migrant-sending countries-the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan-are facing a for-saken schooling...

We examine the phenomenon of forsaken schooling resulting from opportunities abroad. The brain-drain/gain literature takes as its starting point the migration of educated/professional labor from poor origin countries to richer host countries. While high-skilled emigration is troubling, even more...

We examine how the forsaken schooling phenomenon in migration evolved over time in Tajikistan. After completing compulsory schooling at ages 16-17, young men in Tajikistan are forsaking professional education because of opportunities to migrate for higher paid low-skilled jobs in the Russian...

We consider how the possibility of international migration affects an individual’s educational choices in their home country. Without the opportunity to emigrate abroad people choose their educational investment (and hence their skill level) as we might expect, taking into account the utility...