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This paper discusses the existing literature on migration and innovation, with special emphasis on empirical studies based on patent and inventor data. Other sources of micro-data are examined, too, for comparative purposes. A pilot database, based on patent filings at the European Patent Office is presented. It contains information on individual inventors, including their country of residence and of origin. Preliminary evidence suggests that immigrant inventors contribute to innovation not only in the US, but also in selected European countries, where they often rank among the most productive individuals. Data on returnee inventors to selected countries of origin suggest the phenomenon to be of limited scale, and highly subject to errors of measurement.

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. We explain in detail the information contained in the database and discuss the usefulness and reliability of the underlying data. Second, the paper provides a descriptive overview of inventor migration patterns, based on the information contained in the newly constructed database. Among the largest receiving countries, we find that the United States exhibits by far the highest inventor immigration rate, followed by Australia and Canada. European countries lag behind in attracting inventive talent; in addition, France, Germany, and the UK see more inventors emigrating than immigrating. In relation to the number of home country inventors, Central American, Caribbean and African economies show the largest inventor brain drain.

Against a background of increasing violence against non-natives, we estimate the effect of hate crime on refugees’ mental health in Germany. For this purpose, we combine two datasets: administrative records on xenophobic crime against refugee shelters by the Federal Criminal Office and the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees. We apply a regression discontinuity in time design to estimate the effect of interest. Our results indicate that hate crime has a substantial negative effect on several mental health indicators, including the Mental Component Summary score and the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 score. The effects are stronger for refugees with closer geographic proximity to the focal hate crime and refugees with low country-specific human capital. While the estimated effect is only transitory, we argue that negative mental health shocks during the critical period after arrival have important long-term consequences. Keywords: Mental health, hate crime, migration, refugees, human capital.

The large literature that aims to find evidence of climate migration delivers mixed findings. This meta-regression analysis i) summarizes direct links between adverse climatic events and migration, ii) maps patterns of climate migration, and iii) explains the variation in outcomes. Using a set of limited dependent variable models, we meta-analyze thus-far the most comprehensive sample of 3,625 estimates from 116 original studies and produce novel insights on climate migration. We find that extremely high temperatures and drying conditions increase migration. We do not find a significant effect of sudden-onset events. Climate migration is most likely to emerge due to contemporaneous events, to originate in rural areas and to take place in middle-income countries, internally, to cities. The likelihood to become trapped in affected areas is higher for women and in low-income countries, particularly in Africa. We uniquely quantify how pitfalls typical for the broader empirical climate impact literature affect climate migration findings. We also find evidence of different publication biases., CEPA Discussion Papers; 29

We exploit the bilateral and skill dimensions from recent data sets of international migration to test for the existence of Zipf's and Gibrat's Laws in the context of aggregate and high-skilled international immigration and emigration using graphical, parametric and non-parametric analysis. The top tails of the distributions of aggregate and high-skilled immigrants and emigrants adhere to a Pareto distribution with an exponent of unity i.e. Zipf's Law holds. We find some evidence in favour of Gibrat's Law holding for immigration stocks, i.e. that the growth in stocks is independent of their initial values and stronger evidence that immigration densities are diverging over time. Conversely, emigrant stocks are converging in the sense that countries with smaller emigrant stocks are growing faster than their larger sovereign counterparts. Lastly, high skilled immigration and emigration stocks expressed in levels or as densities all exhibit signs of convergence. We conclude by discussing some competing mechanisms that could be driving the observed patterns including: differing fertility rates, reductions in emigration restrictions, migrant sorting and selective immigration policies, immigrant networks and persisting wage differentials.

Using new data matching remittances and monthly payroll disbursals, we demonstrate how fluctuations in migrants' earnings in the United Arab Emirates affect their remittances. We consider three types of income fluctuations that are observable by families at home: seasonalities, weather shocks and a labor reform. Remittances move with all of these income changes. Remittances do not move with an individual's growth in earnings over time. The slope of the relationship between earnings and time in the UAE varies across individuals and is not easy to observe by families. Thus, a key characteristic that drives remittance behavior is the observability of income rather than other features of these fluctuations. The results are consistent with a private information model where remittances are viewed by the migrant worker as payments to their families in an income-sharing contract.

Why do legal permanent migrants return to their home countries? How do home country conditions influence this decision? This paper uses exogenous home country exchange rate shocks arising from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis to distinguish return motivations of a national sample of Australian immigrants. On average, a 10% favorable exchange rate shock (a depreciation in the home country currency) leads to a reduced likelihood of return of 0.37 percentage points for migrants. The effect is found to be stronger for those who had pre-existing intentions to return, weaker for those undecided, and zero for those who initially stated their desire to stay. These results favor a life-cycle explanation for migrant behavior and reject the theory that migrants are target earners who seek to invest upon return home.

This paper addresses the issue of socioeconomic integration of forced return migrants, focusing on the Maghreb countries. Starting from the hypothesis that the return has to be prepared, we test whether a disruption in the migration cycle (such as deportation) increases the individual’s vulnerability and affects his integration from both a structural and sociocultural point of view, using the 2006 MIREM survey. We find that forced returnees are more vulnerable to negative labour market outcomes compared to voluntary returnees. The absence of forced returnees from the labour market, or their underperformances, creates a net loss for the origin country and also incentives to re-migrate. The negative effect is statistically significant not only immediately after return, but also in the long run, at survey time. Forced return is also significantly and negatively correlated with sociocultural integration, reflecting a marginalization of deported migrants in their home environment, which may act as a re-emigration incentive. _________________________________ Dans ce papier j’analyse l’intégration socioéconomique des migrants qui sont forcés de rentrer dans leur pays d’origine, avec un focus sur les pays du Maghreb. Ayant comme point de départ l’hypothèse que le retour doit être préparé, je teste si une interruption dans le cycle migratoire (telle que l’expulsion) accroit la vulnérabilité des individus et impacte leur intégration, à la fois d’un point de vue structurel et socioculturel, en utilisant l’enquête MIREM. Les résultats montrent que les migrants expulsés sont plus vulnérables et réussissent moins bien sur le marché du travail dans le pays d’origine, par rapport aux migrants qui ont choisi volontairement de rentrer. L’exclusion des rapatriés forcés du marché du travail, ou leur situation précaire, représente une perte nette pour le pays d’origine et résulte en une plus forte incitation à ré-émigrer. L’effet négatif de l’expulsion sur les performances sur le marché du travail est statistiquement significatif juste après le retour, mais également à plus long terme, au moment de l’enquête. Le retour forcé est également significativement et négativement corrélé avec le degré d’intégration socioculturelle, reflétant une marginalisation des migrants expulsés dans leur environnement d’origine.

We study the political economy of migration policies in the oil-rich and non-democratic Gulf countries where different economic groups have divergent preferences over the migration policy choices. We consider two policy dimensions: a) the number of migrants allowed into the country and b) whether to discourage remittances by migrants. The inflow of migrant workers leads to a wage decline that harms citizen workers, while capitalists and oil rent earners benefit. When foreign exchange is remitted out of the economy, the real exchange rate depreciates. The remittance outflow benefits oil rent earners, while capitalists and workers lose. The autocratic ruler chooses a migration policy mix and an oil-rent redistribution scheme to maintain critical political support to avoid public rage. Our results explain differences in migration policies and redistribution schemes across Gulf countries. The model also offers predictions regarding the development of migration policies if these countries were to become more democratic.

This paper examines the effects of both permanent and temporary emigration on human capital formation and economic growth of the source regions. To achieve this end, this paper explores the Chinese provincial panel data from 1980 to 2005. First, the fixed effects model is employed to estimate the effect of emigration on school enrollment rates in the source regions. Relative to this aspect, we find that the magnitude (scale) of permanent emigrants (measured by the permanent emigration ratio) is conducive to the improvement of both middle and high schools enrollments. In contrast, the magnitude of temporary emigrants has a significantly positive effect on middle school enrollment but does not have a significant effect on high school enrollment. More interestingly, different educational attainments of temporary emigrants have different effects on school enrollment. Specifically, the share of temporary emigrants with high school education positively affects middle school enrollment, while the share of temporary emigrants with middle school education negatively affects high school enrollment. Second, the instrumental variable method is applied to estimate the effect of emigration on economic growth within the framework of system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The estimation results suggest that both permanent and temporary emigrations have a detrimental effect on the economic growth of the source regions. Our empirical tests provide some new evidence to the "brain drain" debate, which has recently received increasing attention.

In this paper I present a new database of bilateral migrant stocks and I provide new evidence on the determinants of international migration. The new Census-based data are obtained from National Statistical Offices of 24 OECD countries, and they cover the total stock of immigrants in each destination country for 1960-2000, including 188 countries of origin, sometimes in grouped categories. For each census, I keep grouped categories in a raw manner, without making imputations to specific origin countries. In the empirical analysis, I give an explicit treatment to these grouped categories. Results present strong evidence of heterogeneous effects of income gains on migration prospects depending on distance. For example, a 1000 $i ncrease in US income per capita increases the stock of Mexican immigrants in the country by a percentage 2.6 times larger than the percentage increase in the stock of Chinese (8 vs. 3.1 %).

By the mid-19th century, America was the most educated nation on Earth: significant financial investments in education were being undertaken and the majority of children voluntarily attended public schools. So why did states across America start introducing compulsory schooling laws at this time in history? We provide qualitative and quantitative evidence that states adopted compulsory schooling laws as a nation-building tool to instill civic values to the tens of millions of culturally diverse migrants who arrived during the ‘Age of Mass Migration’ between 1850 and 1914. We show the adoption of state level compulsory schooling laws occurred significantly earlier in states that hosted a subgroup of European migrants with lower exposure to civic values in their home countries. We then use cross-county data to show the same subgroup of European migrants had significantly lower demand for American common schooling pre-compulsion, and so would have been less exposed to the kinds of civic value or discipline instilled by the American education system had compulsory schooling not been passed. By studying the link between mass migration and the endogenous policy responses of American-born voters in receiving states, our analysis provides new micro-foundations for compulsory schooling laws, the legislative bedrock on which all future developments of the American schooling system were built.

Significant income gains from migrating from poorer to richer countries have motivated unilateral (source-country) policies facilitating labor emigration. However, their effectiveness is unknown. The authors conducted a large-scale randomized experiment in the Philippines testing the impact of unilaterally facilitating international labor migration. The most intensive treatment doubled the rate of job offers but had no identifiable effect on international labor migration. Even the highest overseas job-search rate that was induced (22 percent) falls far short of the share initially expressing interest in migrating (34 percent). The paper concludes that unilateral migration facilitation will at most induce a trickle, not a flood, of additional emigration.

Migrant networks play an important role in explaining the size and structure of migration flows. They affect the private costs and benefits of migration (assimilation channel) and lower legal entry barriers through family reunification programs (policy channel). This paper presents a micro-founded identification strategy allowing to disentangle the relative importance of these two channels. Our empirical analysis exploits US immigration data by metropolitan area and country of origin. We first find that the elasticity of migration flows to network size is around one. More interestingly, we show that the policy channel accounted at most for a quarter of this elasticity in the 1990s, and the magnitudes of the total network effect and the policy channel are greater for low-skilled migrants. Our results are strongly robust to sample selection, identification assumptions, and treatment for unobserved bilateral heterogeneity. Furthermore, the policy channel was stronger in the 1990s than in the 1980s, possibly reflecting the changes in the US family reunification policies. We conclude that the government capacity to curb the migration multiplier exists, but is limited.

This paper uses a production function to examine the channels through which remittances affect output per worker in 31 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1980 to 2010. Lagged remittances increase physical capital per worker, average years of schooling and total factor productivity, but the effectiveness of remittances varies with the income level of the recipient nation. Although remittances have increased both physical capital and total factor productivity among the upper middle income nations, among the lower middle income, they have increased only the physical capital. Meanwhile a reduction in institutional risk has encouraged investment and efficiency, but its relationship to the effectiveness of remittances has been inconclusive.

Purpose – How do economic prosperity, health expenditure, savings, price-stability, demographic change, democracy, corruption control, press freedom, government effectiveness, human development, foreign aid, physical security, trade openness and financial liberalization play-out in the fight against health-worker crisis when existing emigration levels matter? Despite the acute concern of health-worker crisis in Africa owing to emigration, lack of relevant data has made the subject matter empirically void over the last decades. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A quantile regression approach is used to assess the determinants of health-worker emigration throughout the conditional distributions of health-worker emigration. This provides an assessment of the determinants when existing emigrations levels matter. Findings – Findings provide a broad range of tools for the fight against health-worker brain-drain. As a policy implication, blanket emigration-control policies are unlikely to succeed equally across countries with different levels of emigration. Thus to be effective, immigration policies should be contingent on the prevailing levels of the crisis and tailored differently across countries with the best and worst records on fighting health-worker emigration. Originality/value – This paper has examined the theoretical postulations of a World Health Organization report on determinants of health-worker migration.

This paper considers the relationship between international migration and gender discrimination through the lens of decision-making power over intrahousehold resource allocation. The endogeneity of migration is addressed with a difference-in-differences style identification strategy and a model with household fixed effects. The results suggest that while a migrant household head is away, a greater share of resources is spent on girls relative to boys and his spouse commands greater decision-making power. Once the head returns home, however, a greater share of resources goes to boys, and there is suggestive evidence of greater authority for the head of household.

Nach Angaben der OECD steht Deutschland mittlerweile bei der Zahl der dauerhaften Zuwanderer an zweiter Stelle hinter den USA. Welche ökonomischen Effekte sind zu erwarten, und wie sollte die Migration gesteuert werden? Joachim Herrmann, Bayerischer Staatsminister des Innern, für Bau und Verkehr, betrachtet den Begriff Einwanderungsland für Deutschland als nicht zutreffend. Deutschland sei einer der am dichtesten bevölkerten Staaten der Welt, nur bei Hochqualifizierten und Fachkräften herrsche ein gewisser Bedarf. Zudem werde die Zuwanderung nach Deutschland in weiten Teilen durch das Recht der Europäischen Union bestimmt. Einen Bedarf für ein Einwanderungsgesetz gebe es nicht. Martin Werding, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, sieht einen zentralen Grund dafür, dass Deutschland Zuwanderer begrüßen sollte, im demographischen Wandel. Deutschland habe bereits ein relativ offenes Zuwanderungsrecht, trotzdem könne die Politik noch etwas tun bei der Gestaltung vor allem des Rechts für die Zuwanderung von Nicht-EU-Bürgern. Denn die verschiedenen Programme werden bisher aufgrund der nach wie vor eher unübersichtlichen Rechtslage und Unklarheiten über den Zugang zu entsprechenden Verfahren wenig genutzt. Reiner Klingholz, Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung, geht ebenfalls davon aus, dass Deutschland angesichts der demographischen Entwicklung hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer braucht. Zwar profitiere Deutschland von der Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit im europäischen Wirtschaftsraum. Die Einwanderung aus anderen EU-Ländern reiche aber nicht aus, vielmehr müsse die Politik weitere Anstrengungen unternehmen, um Fachkräfte aus sogenannten Drittstaaten nach Deutschland zu locken, eventuell nach einem Punktesystem, ähnlich wie Kanada. Auch sollte das Potenzial von Asylbewerbern besser genutzt werden. Christine Langenfeld, Sachverständigenrat deutscher Stiftungen für Integration und Migration, wünscht sich ein besseres Marketing für das Einwanderungsland Deutschland. Ihrer Ansicht nach wi

The aim of this article is to identify whether Romania is facing the brain waste in the medical sector. Romania is producing the highest number of medical graduates compared to the main destination countries for Romanian physicians.However, it faces critical shortages in terms of health professionals. What happens with these medical graduates? Two options are possible: either they exit the medical system or they emigrate. Medical doctors accepting locum doctors positions in United Kingdom or general practitioner positions in the rural areas in France although they have a specialty in the origin country are examples of brain waste. In most of the cases, these positions are refused by natives. If the brain drain has negative consequences on the origin country, brain waste affects both the country and the individual.

Scientific networking is the most accessible way a country can turn the brain drain into brain gain. Diaspora’s members offer valuable information, advice or financial support from the destination country, without being necessary to return. This article aims to investigate Romania’s potential of turning brain drain into brain networking, using evidence from the medical sector. The main factors influencing the collaboration with the country of origin are investigated. The conclusions suggest that Romania could benefit from the diaspora option, through an active implication at institutional level and the implementation of a strategy in this area.

The objective of this paper is to shed light on the issue of skill mismatch in the context of return migration in Egypt and Tunisia. Using data on both return and potential migrants in Egypt and Tunisia, we analyze the skills that migrants acquire before and during migration and the way these skills are used upon return. We find evidence of skill mismatch, especially in Tunisia. Theundereducation phenomenon is more prevalent among return migrants, indicating that they make up for their lower education using their migration experience. Finally, we estimate the determinants of skill mismatch on the Egyptian and Tunisian labour markets and find a significant negative effect of return migration on the probability of being undereducated.; L'objectif de cet article est d’apporter un éclairage sur la question de l'inadéquation des qualificationsdans le cadre de la migration de retour en Egypte et en Tunisie. En utilisant à la fois des données surles migrants de retour et sur les migrants potentiels en Egypte et en Tunisie, nous analysons lesqualifications que les migrants acquièrent avant et pendant la période de migration et la façon dont cescompétences sont utilisées à leur retour. Nos résultats confirment l’existence d’un fort degréd'inadéquation des qualifications, en particulier en Tunisie. Le phénomène de la sous-éducation estplus présent pour les migrants de retour, indiquant qu'ils compensent leur faible niveau d'éducation enutilisant leur expérience migratoire. Enfin, nous examinons les déterminants de l'inadéquation desqualifications sur les marchés du travail égyptien et tunisien et trouvons en effet une corrélationnégative et significative de la migration de retour sur la probabilité d'être sous-éduqué.

Immigration can help to alleviate the burden ageing presents for the welfare states of most Western Economies. To show this, a macroeconomic model is developed which deals with the effect of both ageing and immigration on economic growth, through home-biased capital accumulation. The model includes a detailed description of the labor market, analyzing the interaction with low-skilled unemployment. The empirical relevance of some crucial model assumptions is shown to hold for the Netherlands, 1973 – 2009, using a vector-error-correction model. Simulations of the latter model show that permanent shocks in immigration will help to alleviate the ageing problem in the long run, as long as the immigrants will be able to participate in the labor force at least as much as the native population. Moreover, the better educated the immigrants are or become, the higher their contribution to growth will be.

The authors use an original panel dataset of migrant departures from the Philippines to identify the responsiveness of migrant numbers and wages to gross domestic product shocks in destination countries. They find a large significant elasticity of migrant numbers to gross domestic product shocks at destination, but no significant wage response. This is consistent with binding minimum wages for migrant labor. This result implies that labor market imperfections that make international migration attractive also make migrant flows more sensitive to global business cycles. Difference-in-differences analysis of a minimum wage change for maids confirms that minimum wages bind and demand is price sensitive without these distortions.

Japan needs to develop a strategy for planning and realizing economic integration suitable for Asia. Such a strategy should cover not only liberalization of trade in goods and services and investment but also management of international migration. When developing the strategy, it is important to recognize that since the turn of the century, the leadership of globalization is shifting from developed countries to emerging countries.

The proportion of foreign-born people in rich countries has tripled since 1960, and the emigration of high-skilled people from poor countries has accelerated. Many countries intensify their efforts to attract and retain foreign students, which increases the risk of brain drain in the sending countries. In poor countries, this transfer can change the skill structure of the labor force, cause labor shortages, and affect fiscal policy, but it can also generate remittances and other benefits from expatriates and returnees. Overall, it can be a boon or a curse for developing countries, depending on the country’s characteristics and policy objectives.

Restricting immigration to young and skilled immigrants using a point system, as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, succeeds in selecting economically desirable immigrants and provides orderly management of population growth. But the point system cannot fix short-term skilled labor shortages in a timely manner nor prevent poor labor market outcomes for immigrants, since domestic employers can undervalue schooling and work experience acquired abroad. Furthermore, the efficacy of a point system can be compromised if unscreened visa categories receive higher priority.

The present paper describes the modelling approach of regional labour markets taken in the newly developed dynamic spatial general equilibrium model RHOMOLO, where the labour market equilibrium is determined by firms’ labour demand, a wage-curve with unemployment, and inter-regional labour migration. The RHOMOLO model is parameterised by estimating the key structural parameters econometrically. In order to illustrate the potential of the proposed dynamic spatial general equilibrium approach to inter-regionally integrated labour markets, we carry out simulations showing the effects of a reduction in transportation cost, and assess the impact on regional labour markets. Our results confirm that wages and unemployment are by far the most important channels of adjustment to macro-economic and policy shocks in the EU. In contrast, labour migration plays a secondary role in labour market adjustments in the EU. Our results also suggest that the relationship between market access, labour demand and labour supply is non-linear and spatially inter-dependent, which underlines the importance of the proposed dynamic spatial general equilibrium approach., JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growth

This study investigates the effects of migration possibilities on the demand for education and human capital formation in the labour-sending country. The paper assumes that workers have to pay a pecuniary cost privately to receive education under budget constraints. It was found that higher migration possibilities result in an increase in the number of workers who demand education due to increases in its return. However, these workers lower the individual demand for education due to price increases. When the education supply is insufficient, higher migration possibilities may lower average human capital; that is, a brain drain may occur. This contrasts with the usual argument that emphasises the positive effect of migration possibilities. Restrictive immigration policies were found not to be completely detrimental to labour-sending countries since such policies may enhance the human capital formation., Journal of Economic Integration; 28(4), pp.631-648; 2013

Este artículo revisa la literatura nacional e internacional sobre la relación entre migración de retorno y emprendimiento. Presenta las causas de la migración de retorno y las teorías que la explican. Además, describe los resultados de los trabajos revisados, y compara las metodologías y los datos utilizados en los estudios más representativos. Por último, señala lo que se sabe del tema y los vacíos que persisten, y hace recomendaciones para investigaciones futuras.

This paper studies the growth dynamics of a developing country under migration. Assuming that human capital formation is subject to a strong enough, positive intertemporal externality, the prospect of migration will increase growth in the home country in the long run. If the external effect is less strong, there exists at least a level effect on the stock of human capital in the home country. In either case, the home country experiences a welfare gain, provided that migration is sufficiently restrictive. These results, obtained in a dynamic general equilibrium setting, extend and strengthen the results of Stark and Wang (2002) obtained in the context of a static model.

This paper analyses the impact of foreign health aid on the emigration rates of physicians. We use a panel database to investigate the emigration of physicians from 192 source countries to 17 destination countries between 1995 and 2004. First, we investigate the direct impact of health assistance using the generalised method of moments (GMM) and highlight a significant negative effect of foreign health assistance on the medical brain drain. Moreover, we analyse whether this effect of health aid is more effective in a context of good governance. We find that health aid is more effective at reducing physicians' emigration rates when the levels of corruption and inflation are low.

We examine the influence of corruption on migration for 111 countries between 1985 and 2000. Robust evidence indicates that corruption is among the push factors of migration, especially fuelling skilled migration. We argue that corruption tends to diminish the returns to education, which is particularly relevant to the better educated.

Medical brain drain is defined as the migration of health personnel from developing countries to developed countries and between industrialized nations in search for better opportunities. This phenomenon became a global growing concern due to its impact on both the donor and the destination countries. This article aims to present the main theoretical contributions starting from 1950 until today and the historical evolution, in the attempt of correlating the particular case of medical brain drain with the theory and evolution of the brain drain in general. This article raises questions and offers answers, identifies the main issues and looks for possible solutions in order to reduce the emigration of medical doctors. Factors of influence include push (low level of income, poor working conditions, the absence of job openings and social recognition, oppressive political climate) and pull (better remuneration and working conditions, prospects for career development, job satisfaction, security) factors. Developing countries are confronting with the loss of their most valuable intellectuals and the investment in their education, at the benefit of developed nations. An ethical debate arises as the disparities between countries increases, industrialized nations filling in the gaps in health systems with professionals from countries already facing shortages. However, recent literature emphasizes the possibility of a “beneficial brain drain” through education incentives offered by the emigration prospects. Other sources of “brain gain” for donor country are the remittances, the scientific networks and return migration. Measures to stem the medical brain drain involve the common effort and collaboration between developing and developed countries and international organizations. Measures adopted by donor countries include higher salaries, better working conditions, security, career opportunities, incentives to stimulate return migration. Destination countries could fight against the exodus of physicians through self-sufficiency, financial compensations paid for the skilled workforce coming from developing countries and agreements forbidding the recruitment of health professionals from countries already suffering of scarce resources. International organizations’ contribution includes collaboration and actions oriented towards the adoption of an ethical guideline. As the medical brain drain is a global concern, its contraction requires global solutions.

We provide new estimates of migrant flows into and out of America during the Age of Mass Migration at the turn of the twentieth century. Our analysis is based on a novel data set of administrative records covering the universe of 24 million migrants who entered Ellis Island, New York between 1892 and 1924. We use these records to measure inflows into New York, and then scale-up these figures to estimate migrant inflows into America as a whole. Combining these flow estimates with census data on the stock of foreign-born in America in 1900, 1910 and 1920, we conduct a demographic accounting exercise to estimate out-migration rates in aggregate and for each nationality-age-gender cohort. This exercise overturns common wisdom on two fronts. First, we estimate flows into the US to be 20% and 170% higher than stated in official statistics for the 1900-10 and 1910-20 decades, respectively. Second, once mortality is accounted for, we estimate out-migration rates from the US to be around .6 for the 1900-10 decade and around .75 for the 1910-20. These figures are over twice as high as official estimates for each decade. That migration was effectively a two-way flow between the US and the sending countries has major implications for understanding the potential selection of immigrants that chose to permanently reside in the US, their impact on Americans in labor markets, and institutional change in America and sending countries.

The migration of young Chinese scientists to undertake graduate studies in U.S. universities is arguably one of the most important recent episodes of skilled migration. Using a new data set covering around 16,000 Ph.D. graduates in 161 U.S. chemistry departments, we show that Chinese students have a scientific output during their thesis that is significantly higher than other students. In fact, conditional on acceptance into the same programs, Chinese students perform about as well as the awardees of the NSF doctoral fellowship program. These results shed new light on the benefits of student migration on scientific productivity of destination countries. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This article is based on data provided by World Bank and deals with the question of how migration correlates with economic development of the countries where the migrants are living in. In order to prove that, I studied whether the International Migration Stock and Net Migration of several countries, including Romania, are related with Gross Domestic Product, as a variable regarding economic development, and I employed some other variables regarding education, health and employment, as they are the main reasons for migration decision of people.

In deliberating whether to pursue an undergraduate education in the US, a foreign student takes into consideration the expected probability of securing US employment after graduation. The H-1B visa provides a primary means of legal employment for college-educated foreign-nationals. In October 2003, the government drastically reduced the number of available H-1B visas, hence lowering the probability of a college-educated foreign-national finding employment, and possibly discouraging highly qualified international students from attending US colleges and universities. However, citizens from five countries are de facto exempt from the 2003 H-1B visa restrictions. Using international students from these five exempt nations as the control and other international students as the treatment group, we study the effects of the 2003 H-1B policy change on the pool of international applicants to US schools. We use two datasets: (i) College Board SAT score data on prospective international applicants; and (ii) SAT and high-school GPA data on international applicants to a single highly selective university. Our fixed effect estimates show that the restrictive immigration policy has had an adverse impact on the quality of prospective international applicants, reducing their SAT scores by about 1.5%. This effect is driven mostly by a decline in the number of SAT score reports sent by international students at the top-quintile of the SAT score distribution, suggesting that the restrictive immigration policy disproportionately discourages high-ability international students from attending US schools. Our results are robust to alternative specifications, including the use of high-school GPA as a measure of applicant ability.

The economic crisis affected the size and quality of employment in most economic and social activities, but in different proportions. The health care sector faced a lower dynamics of employment diminution, but the personnel flows to better paid jobs continued at a higher rate than before the crisis. The failure of some countries to create quality jobs in the public health system caused the migration of specialists to the private sector or other countries. A factor that intensified the flows was the severe austerity policy in the public sector during the crisis, consisting mainly of layoffs and wage diminution. Such anticrisis measures, in cases like Romania, were uniformly taken for the whole personnel paid from the state budget, without taking into account the lasting deficit in employment (in absolute number, but mainly structurally, by specialties) in fields such as health and education. We intend to present in this paper the main features of the mobility of the medical personnel (focusing on the physician brain drain) and the impact on the human capital and the labour market in Romania. We further identify several political measures to retain specialists in the country of origin and to create quality jobs.

This paper explores the impacts of the rights of migrant workers (‘migrant rights’) on the human development of actual and potential migrants, their families, and other people in migrants’ countries of origin. A key feature of the paper is its consideration of how migrant rights affect both the capability to move and work in higher income countries (i.e. the access of workers in low‐income countries to labor markets of higher‐income countries) and capabilities while living and working abroad. The paper suggests that there may be a trade‐off between the number and some of the socio‐economic rights of low‐skilled migrant workers admitted to high‐income countries, and explores the implications for human development.

This paper examines macroeconomic performance and policy environment of post-independent sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) vis-à-vis remittance flows to the sub-region. The paper finds that SSA is the only developing region in the world that still depends on foreign aid as its leading external non-debt capital and attracts the least remittances, notwithstanding the positive growth trend since the pursuit of economic policy reforms in the 1980s. In general, low inflation, higher real income growth, domestic savings, investment, exports, financial development, and fiscal policy effectiveness strongly and positively correlate with remittance inflows. This implies remittances are likely to be driven by sound macroeconomic environment in recipient countries. An affirmation of this finding is that, in SSA, (and, indeed, for all developing economies), remittances are pro-cyclical and positively correlate with macroeconomic performance and stability.

Estimation of the causal effect of parental migration on children's educational attainment is complicated by the fact that migrants and non-migrants are likely to differ in unobservable ways that also affect children's educational outcomes. This paper suggests a novel way of addressing this selection problem by looking within the family to exploit variation in siblings' ages at the time of parental migration. The basic assumption underlying the analysis is that parental migration will have no effect on the educational outcomes of children who are at least 20 because they have already completed their educations. Their younger siblings, in contrast, may still be in school, and thus will be affected by the parental migration experience. The results point to a statistically significant positive effect of paternal U.S. migration on education for girls, suggesting that pushing a father's U.S. migration earlier in his daughter's life can lead to an increase in her educational attainment of up to 1 year relative to delaying migration until after she has turned 20. In contrast, paternal domestic migration has no statistically significant effect on educational attainment for girls or boys, suggesting that father absence does not play a major role in determining children's educational outcomes. Instead, these results suggest that the marginal dollars from U.S. migrant remittances appear to enable families to further educate their daughters. Thus, policymakers should view international migration as a potential pathway by which families raise educational attainments of girls in particular. JEL: O15; J12; J13; J16; J24; F22.

According to the United Nations, over 2.45 million people are victims of human trafficking, and the number of unrecorded cases is also believed to be significant. Therefore, many countries have increased their efforts to combat trafficking and to protect the victims. DIW Berlin recently updated the 3P Anti-Trafficking Policy Index which facilitates an international comparison of government policy efforts in three areas: prosecution, (victim) protection, and prevention. The update of the Index now covers the period from 2000 to 2011. On a worldwide scale, countries have generally shown high commitment towards implementing prosecution policies, and the most significant improvements have been observed in preventive efforts. However, many countries fail to ensure the protection of trafficking victims. By international standards, Germany performs well when it comes to prevention and prosecution. However, it has failed to protect the victims of trafficking and, over the past year, this situation has further deteriorated.

Remittances have become an important source of foreign exchange earning in many developing economies like Nigeria as migrants continue to send money (income) to relatives at home but the main motive for remitting income remains controversial among scholars and policy makers. This paper therefore assesses the relative importance of the socio-political and economic determinants of remittance inflow using an Error Correction Mechanism to analyze panel data in Nigeria. We find that altruism is important for remitting, as per capita income differentials, gross capital formation, official Nigerian migrant remittances and economic/political freedom are significant and positive, implying that remittances are countercyclical in nature. However, there is evidence to suggest that the relationship between per capita income and worker’s remittances is not linear–positive at low level of income and negative at higher income. The result also shows that the development of the financial sector would encourage remittance inflow although this is not robust to the differential specification.

Most studies on migration are limited to economic impact of migration. But this is only one side of the coin. In order to understand it better, international migration should be placed within the broader context of development. The first part of the article shows the channels through which international migration affects the home country. But the new migration theories have moved to a wider view, considering that development leads by itself to migration, first internally and then externally. Although not sufficient, internal and external mobility are perceived as indispensible for development. Thus, an overview of migration within the more complex process of development is essential, capturing the mutual influence between migration and development. Therefore, the second part of the article points out the need to place migration as an endogenous development variable, along with other variables like internal migration, demographic and economic developments and indentifies different development stages, according to migration transition theory and migration hump theory; so it aims to indicate the necessity of replacing the “one-way—impact of migration on development” approach with “the reciprocal relationship between migration and broader development processes” in order to a better understand of migration and competent policy recommendations definition.

The paper aims to identify potential connections between migration and food consumption habits of Romanian immigrants in Andalusia, Spain and to study a series of factors that may contribute to the establishment of these connections. The analysis was based on a series of information obtained through a field research carried out between January and June 2011 among the Romanian immigrants in Andalusia (306 respondents). The analysis’ results revealed the fact that after migration, the Romanian immigrants who took part in the study felt a series of changes in their food consumption habits, mainly resulting in consuming a higher proportion of the food products specific to the host country, compared to the food products specific to their country of origin. The analysed factors that may influence the relationship between migration and food consumption habits were encountered in the specific scientific literature, namely the length of residence and immigrants’ age. The analysis revealed the fact that among different groups of respondents by length of residence and age, there are statistically significant differences in what concerns their perception regarding the changes in their food consumption habits after migration. The length of residence is positively correlated with the changes in food consumption after migration, while age is negatively correlated.

Migration represented and represents a very important phenomenon at global level, taking into consideration besides its demographic implications, its extremely diverse implications such as socio-economic, socio-cultural, territorial, or environmental. This represents, probably, the main reason why the research on migration is interdisciplinary, having strong connections with sociology, political sciences, history, economics, geography, demography, psychology, or low, among others. All these disciplines target different aspects of population migration, and a proper comprehension of the phenomenon implies a contribution from the part of all of them. Although migration represents a phenomenon manifested since ancient times, it has never been such an universal or significant phenomenon from the socio-economical or political perspective, as it is in present times. International migration has both a negative and positive impact on both provider and receiving countries, in general playing a very important role in the structure and dimension of the population of a country. Romania is not an exception to the previously expressed statement; furthermore, after the fall of the communist regime, migration became for Romania one of the most important socio-economical phenomena. The present paper aims at analyzing in a descriptive manner the international migration phenomenon in Romania between 1991 and 2008, from quantitative perspective. Based on data identified in the \"Statistical Yearbook of Romania" - 2008 and 2009 editions - the analysis revealed the fact that both immigration and emigration flows registered oscillatory evolutions in the analysed period, but the general trend of immigration was of increasing, while the one of emigration was of decreasing. Immigration was dominated by the presence of males, of persons aged between 26 and 40 and of persons coming from the Republic of Moldova. On the other side, in the case of emigration the significant presence of females, of persons aged between 26 and 40, of persons of Romanian nationality and of those who preferred as main destination country Italy, was remarkable.

This article contributes to the emerging literature on gender differences in the causes and consequences of brain drain. Differentiating between gender bias in the access to economic opportunities and gender differentials in economic outcomes, we find that differences in access have a significant impact on the emigration of highly skilled women relative to that of men. However, differentials in outcomes do not have a significant impact. Additionally, the structure of political institutions in the source countries does not have a significant impact on the difference in emigration rates.

Research Concerning the Romanian Immigrants Owners of Grocery Stores with Romanian Food Products in Andalusia, Spain