Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35046 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3602
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We consider the welfare effects of skilled worker emigration in a context where skilled labor plays a role in product design. We show such emigration can benefit the residents left behind, even when consumers' tastes exhibit a form of home bias. This is because emigration improves the design of goods designed by skilled emigrants but consumed in the sending country. In contrast to existing models of beneficial brain drain, our results do not require agglomeration economies, education-related externalities, remittances, return migration, or an emigration lottery. Instead, they are driven purely by differences in market size that induce skilled emigrants to design better products abroad than at home.
Subjects: 
Brain drain
international labor migration
product quality
JEL: 
F22
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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