Spatial mobility in elite academic institutions in economics: the case of Spain

Raquel Carrasco () and Javier Ruiz-Castillo

SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, 2019, vol. 10, issue 2, No 3, 172 pages

Abstract: Abstract Using a dataset of 3540 economists working in 2007 in 125 of the best academic centers in 22 countries, this paper presents some evidence on spatial mobility patterns in Spain and other countries conditional on some personal, department, and country characteristics. There are productivity and other reasons for designing a scientific policy with the aims of attracting foreign talent (brain gain), minimizing the elite brain drain, and recovering nationals who have earned a Ph.D. or have spent some time abroad (brain circulation). Our main result is that Spain has more brain gain, more brain circulation and less brain drain than comparable large, continental European countries, i.e., Germany, France, and Italy, where economists have similar opportunities for publishing their research in English or in their own languages. We suggest that these results can be mostly explained by the governance changes introduced in a number of Spanish institutions in 1975–1990 by a sizable contingent of Spanish economists coming back home after attending graduate school abroad. These initiatives were also favored by the availability of resources to finance certain research-related activities, including international Ph.D. programs.

Keywords: Governance; Economics institutions; Brain drain; Brain circulation; Brain gain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13209-019-0189-5 Abstract (text/html)

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:spr:series:v:10:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s13209-019-0189-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13209

DOI: 10.1007/s13209-019-0189-5

Access Statistics for this article

SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association is currently edited by Nezih Guner

More articles in SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association from Springer, Spanish Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().