Do Brain Drain and Poverty Result from Coordination Failures?

David de la Croix and Frédéric Docquier

No 2010016, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: We explore the complementarities between high-skill emigration and poverty in developing countries. We build a model endogenizing human-capital accumulation, high-skill migration and productivity. Two countries sharing the same characteristics may end up either in a “low poverty/low brain drain” path or in a “high poverty/high brain drain” path. After identifying country-specific parameters, we find that, for a majority of countries, the observed equilibrium has higher income than the other possible one. In 22 developing countries (including 20 small states with less than 2 million inhabitants), poverty and high brain drain are worsened by a coordination failure. For 25 other countries, a radical worsening of economic performances is feasible. These results are fairly robust to identification assumptions and the inclusion of a brain-gain mechanism.

Keywords: Brain drain; Development; Multiple equilibria; Coordination failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 F22 O11 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2010-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2010016.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do brain drain and poverty result from coordination failures? (2012)
Working Paper: Do brain drain and poverty result from coordination failures? (2012)
Working Paper: Do Brain Drain and Poverty Result from Coordination Failures? (2010)
Working Paper: Do Brain Drain and Poverty Result from Coordination Failures? (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:ctl:louvir:2010016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Virginie LEBLANC ().