Moderating the Impact of Nurse Emigration on the Health Sector: The State and Policy Instrument Choice.

This paper offers an unconventional approach to the migration‐development nexus by zooming in on the health sector. Although state strategies promoting nurse migration are widely studied, comprehension on how the state functions as a central actor in emigration is empirically deficient in accounting for the different development levels experienced by sending countries. Drawing from the literature on policy instrument choice, this paper examines how the Philippines as the leading nurse sending state in the world intervenes in the emigration of Filipino nurses and what are the effects of these interventions? Based on a key informant survey (N = 100), regression results show that the state's regulatory authority in the remittance market triggers the positive contribution of nurse remittances on health sector development. This paper concludes by discussing how the choice of policy instruments is a crucial decision point for nurse‐sending countries when maximizing the development impact of emigration on the health sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]