Brain Refrain and Human Capital Formation in Spain

Jose Blanco-Álvarez (), Christopher Parsons (), Sam Tang () and Yong Wang ()
Additional contact information
Jose Blanco-Álvarez: University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Christopher Parsons: University of Western Australia
Sam Tang: University of Western Australia
Yong Wang: City University of Hong Kong

No 15400, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine how low and high skilled internal emigration causally affect investments in human capital at origin. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence of a disincentive mechanism through which individuals refrain from education should low skilled emigration prove a viable alternative. Our identification strategy leverages administrative records of labor contracts of differing skills signed at migrants' provincial destinations. We document large Brain Gain and Brain Refrain effects. Our results paradoxically demonstrate an improvement in human capital given the trajectory of the Spanish labor market over our sample period. When juxtaposed against provinces' net human capital positions however, most provinces lose.

Keywords: brain drain; brain gain; brain refrain; internal migration; low skilled migration; high skilled migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15400.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp15400

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().