Working Paper

Brain Gain and the Transferability of Skills

by Claudio Thum and Silke Uebelmesser


Contents: [ Abstract | Download | Contact]

• Abstract
  
  Allowing for migration does not necessarily cause a brain drain for the economy since opening an economy improves the outside option of the workers and icreases the incentives to invest in human capital. This paper shows that the amount of huma n capital in the home country is higher compared to a closed economy if human capital is at least partially transferable and if workers exhibit a constant relative risk aversion smaller than 1. Instead of a brain drain, the option to migrate then leads to a brain gain.

  JEL-Classification: F22, J24

  Keywords: Migration; Transferability of Human Capital; Risk Aversion

  
  

• Download
  
  The paper will soon be available as a PDF document.
  
  
• Contact
  
  Silke Uebelmesser
  University of Munich, Department of Economics, CES, Schackstr. 4, 80539 Munich, Germany,
  eMail: uebelmesser@lmu.de

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