Brain drain or brain gain? International labor mobility and human capital formation

This paper studies the impact of international labor migration on human capital investment in both hosting and sending countries using an integrated theoretical framework. We develop a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium human capital investment model with international labor mobility, in which both decisions to migrate and to invest in skill acquisition are endogenous. We show that the human capital formation process in the countries of origin is very sensitive to migration policies implemented by hosting countries. Our findings show that human capital accumulation in the sending country is encouraged by the possibility of emigration to higher labor productivity countries, supporting the recent view of the 'brain gain' hypothesis. Productivity shocks hitting the hosting country reduce the human capital investment by natives but increase the human capital investment in the sending country when migration is allowed. Finally, we find that migration increases world human capital, increasing the stock of human capital in both hosting and sending countries.