Brain Drain in Developing Countries

By Frédéric Docquier, Olivier Lohest, Abdeslam Marfouk. 2007

236 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An original data set on international migration by educational attainment for 1990 and 2000 is used to analyze the determinants of brain drain from developing countries. The analysis starts with a simple decomposition of the brain drain in two multiplicative components, the degree of openness of sending countries (measured by the average emigration rate) and the schooling gap (measured by the education level of emigrants compared with natives). Regression models are used to identify the determinants of these components and explain cross-country differences in the migration of skilled workers. Unsurprisingly, the brain drain is strong in small countries that are close to major Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regions that share colonial links with OECD countries, and that send most of their migrants to countries with quality-selective immigration programs. Interestingly, the brain drain increases with political instability and the degree of fractionalization at origin and decreases with natives' human capital.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b7e38dec15ff4573d29f5e355cbe021583404138

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Citations in the corpus

A Gendered Assessment of Highly Skilled Emigration (2009, background): “3See Docquier et al. (2007), Beine et al. (2008), Cecchi et al. (2007), Krueger and Rapoport (2006), Nimii and Ozden (2006), Javorcik et al. (2006), Grogger and Hanson (2008), Easterly and Nyarko (2005), etc. 4Although the "non-economic" literature on the migration of women (mainly based on case…”
Remittances, growth and poverty: New evidence from Asian countries (2014, background): “On the other hand, migration of high skilled workers can result in a brain drain (Adams, 2003; Docquier et al. 2007) that could have a negative impact on the growth of the country in the long run.”
Women on the Move: The Neglected Gender Dimension of the Brain Drain (2007, unknown): “They tend to confirm the usual findings according to which emigration rates are higher for smaller countries and islands, but find no robust impact of language or the origin country’s level of development9 (e.g. Docquier et al. 2007, Dumont and Lemaître 2005).”