Does international mobility of high-skilled workers aggravate between-country inequality?

Volker Grossmann and David Stadelmann

Journal of Development Economics, 2011, vol. 95, issue 1, 88-94

Abstract: This paper analyzes the interaction of international migration of high-skilled labor and relative wage income between source and destination economies of expatriates. We develop an overlapping-generations model with increasing returns which suggests that international integration of the market for skilled labor aggravates between-country inequality by harming those which are source economies to begin with while benefiting host economies. The result is robust to allowing governments to optimally adjust productivity-enhancing investments which could potentially attenuate brain drain. Optimal public investment tends to decrease in response to higher emigration.

Keywords: Brain; drain; Between-country; wage; differences; Public; investment; Total; factor; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3878(10)00047-7
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Does International Mobility of High-Skilled Workers Aggravate Between-Country Inequality ? (2010)
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:88-94

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 ().