On the International Mobility of the Highly Skilled

Transnational or international factor mobility is an important issue in international economics. In a global world, the impact of factor mobility on domestic economy is an especially significant matter. Most of the existing trade theories focus on economic impact of factor mobility on the productive capacity of nations, but ignore other important issues such as how domestic politics might alter the results or how factor mobility might hinder economic development in a developing nation. This paper considers the issue of the international mobility of one specific kind of factor of production: the highly-skilled workers. The issue of the so-called “brain drain” draws wide attention from scholars in both growth theory and development economics. Most of the economic theories on mobility of the highly skilled deal mainly with the effects of “brain drain” on economic growth of developing countries or the effects of “brain gain” on developed countries. To gain a greater understanding of these theories, the current paper presents an overview of these theories, classifying them into four categories on the basis of the existing hypotheses on “brain drain.”