The New Economics of the Brain Drain

Oded Stark

Published: June 2005

For nearly four decades now, the conventional wisdom has been that the migration of human capital (skilled workers) from a developing country to a developed country is detrimental to the developing country. However, this perception need not hold. A well-designed migration policy can result in a “brain gain” to the developing country rather than in just a “brain drain” from it, as well as in a welfare increase for all of its workers—migrants and non-migrants alike—as the new research reported here suggests.