Brain-drain taxes for non-benevolent governments

John Douglas Wilson

Journal of Development Economics, 2011, vol. 95, issue 1, 68-76

Abstract: This paper investigates the welfare effects of brain-drain taxes levied by non-benevolent governments, whereby a country collects a tax from skilled emigrants but potentially wastes a sizable portion of the revenue. Using a model in which taxes are chosen to maximize expected political rents, I show that the availability of a brain-drain tax increases a weighted sum of citizen utilities. However, the government's optimal brain-drain tax is found to be higher than the level that maximizes this weighted sum. In another model, a brain-drain tax is found to be desirable when governments use public good expenditures to compete for mobile residents.

Keywords: Brain; drain; Tax; Emigration; Migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3878(10)00093-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:95:y:2011:i:1:p:68-76

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().