Endogenous emigration of skilled labour

Abstract

There is an increasing trend in the pattern of world migration of educated and skilled individuals leaving developing countries for developed ones. This has created much concern about a so-called “brain drain”. As the name suggests, the brain drain was believed by early commentators to be unequivocally harmful to those countries which suffered from it. More recent literature does not directly refute this belief but puts it under closer scrutiny, and finds the possibility of many different mechanisms through which the negative effects of the brain drain may be mitigated. This paper aims to illuminate by surveying the literature on the brain drain. It does so by exploring the brain drain in the current context of globalisation and by making comparisons to previous periods of globalisation, by examining the theoretical analyses of migration and the brain drain, by exploring an economic model of the brain drain, and by analysing the particular case of New Zealand, a developed country with a high rate of skilled and educated emigration.