There's no serious attempt to come to grips with the countervailing benefits of a brain drain both direct and indirect. Let me address the issue of the most highly skilled workers who emigrate:

1) By leaving, the educated raise the wages of those skilled workers left behind thus inducing more investment in education;

2) Overseas workers remit money home at levels that often exceed total foreign investment in those countries. Remittances are also more productive and less prone to waste than direct foreign aid;

3) Foreign trained "brains" serve as a conduit to best practice abroad, put pressure on local govts and schools to improve standards, and serve as a potential source of "untainted" experts when local conditions lead to upheavals, revolutions, or overthrow of the political gang that kept the countries poor in the first place.

It's notable that two of the countries with the highest recorded multi-decade growth rates in history -- Taiwan and South Korea -- had few qualms about thousands of their best and brightest going abroad. And they're now creating conditions at home to woo them back.

I have no idea whether one can show that on net, brain drains are harmful. But you're correct that this is typical biased reporting with no sense of balance or opportunity cost, i.e. par for the MSM.

It's really strange. You globalizers don't look for simple and direct causes, you have to come up with second order effects to avoid seeing an obvious truth.

If a poor country invests X amount of capital in a doctor, nurse or other health practitioner , and the person leaves to the first world, that country simply does not benefit from the investment in the person. We don't need to do econometric analysis here, its perfect common sense. It might-- indeed probably is true that brain drain is to some extent caused by corruption -- but it sure doesn't help a country to have its educated populace leaving for other locales.

BTW if I am not mistaken, the term Brain Drain originated in concerns that British doctors, scientists, etc were leaving for the US after WWII , even then its harmful effects were realized.

New Zealand and Australian media have been complaining about a brain drain for generations now, and with some cause. Both are small nations thousands of miles from the leaders in most fields of endeavor; both see many of their most talented citizens leave every year.

But both countries are also self-sustaining entities economically and culturally, and many smaller developing countries are not. The only thing separating New Zealand and Australia from the rest of the world is physical distance. Political turmoil and fractious, backward cultures that retard development of the infrastructure required for economic growth are problems for other nations.

We have seen this often enough before, as the end destination for immigrants from all over the world during the last two-odd centuries. Immigrants seek greater opportunities, sure, but they are usually also trying to get away from something, and it often helps them to devote more time to assimilating to the culture of the place they arrived than to trouble themselves with the problems of the country they just escaped from.

This is why for New Zealand and Australia the "brain drain" while a real phenomenon is not a major problem. Talented people from these countries leave for America and Europe, but talented people from other parts of the world have historically viewed both nations as great places to emigrate to. That isn't true of many nations in South America, the Caribbean, Asia and especially Africa, and the governments of these countries need to take a hard look at why this is.

It's certainly possible that the brain drain might cause damage. (But not certain: after all, those migrants offer remittances, gain experience, and in the case of Silicon Valley workers have often returned to set up their own high-tech businesses.)
Even if the brain drain is bad for poor countries, what should we in rich countries do? Is it ethical to keep talented, ambitious people locked away in poor countries just because we think it might help those countries?

1) Er... has Indonesia been a "powerhouse of the developing world" since 1998?

This is just a nitpick, Dan, and unworthy of you. Besides, in terms of population, Indonesia has been a powerhouse :-)

2) How much of the cause behind brain drains is simple geography? India, China, Brazil, and Indonesia are all quite distant from an OECD country

Sorry, but I think thats nonsense. Cultural and lingusitic affinity are important, but geographic affinity (except as it contributes to the other 2) -- I mean, its only a plane ride away to get here from anywhere. Its also more important for the first set of immigrants. Later ones can find communities of their own country immigrants in the US.

I think a brain drain can be harmful to a poor country (especially in fields like medicine) when the state has invested or subsidized the education of these people. Also, since there is only a finite amount of money that government can invest, one is left to wonder if (for instance) the Indian government had invested more money in primary education for everyone, would that have benefited India more than say creating a few elite schools, most of whose students leave for abroad (I'm one for them).

Now, its clear that expats have helped development in India and Taiwan and some other countries greatly. Some other countries have not been so fortunate.

In any case, I dont think the concerns of those who are bothered about brain drains can be dismissed so easily.

Remittances are also more productive and less prone to waste than direct foreign aid

U.S. Amb. Tony Garza: "Reliance on remittances from the U.S. [to Mexico] is not a viable economic policy."

And, did you know that half of the population of the Mexican state of Zacatecas lives in the U.S.? Obviously, that's harming that state. And, it helps the Mexican elite avoid reforms.

And, all that remittances money causes Mexico to encourage their people to leave.

And, those American companies that send remittance money for people then end up taking actions to make sure that money doesn't dry up. American banks are working with their local Mexican consulate to pass out ID cards that the FBI calls unsafe but which the Bush administration worked to allow banks to accept.

Of course, the same questionably-American sources that push remittances as foreign aid will then not see a problem with such corruption.

The term "brain drain" is incorrect - a better term would be "brain banking" - the US used to be positively brimming with 'brain workers' from India and the others - but when opportunites increased at home, they moved back, taking skills and abilities gained inthe US with them.

Much of the economic development in India is due to expats applying what they learned overseas - seems that the local business environment mostly trained its leaders in cronyism & corruption. And the role of the 'overseas Chinese' in China's expansion cannot be overstated.

And Mitchell, very little of a doctor's education comes from "a poor country invest[ing] X amount of capital" in their education - its mostly either their own family's money, or the family's ability to divert some of the official corruption into an education for a family member - in either case, the money spent would not be used to better the lives of ordinary citizens - it would just end up being spent or squired away in the first world.

If that wasn't the case, the doctors wouldn't need to emigrate. That's exactly why India and the others are no longer top talent exporters.

Let's review - talented people get to go overseas, learn new skills and better themselves, and when their homeland can usefully employ them, they can go home and spark an economic revolution. How would it it be better for anyone anywhere for them to sit at home and become another generation of corrupt beurocrats or stagnating as enderemployed professionals?

Is it ethical to keep talented, ambitious people locked away in poor countries just because we think it might help those countries?

Yes, it is. It is both ethical for the potential receiving country to train/retrain its own workers in preference to importing foreign workers, and it is ethical for sending countries to wish to recoup the investment they put in schooling people.

And Jos

You are making assertions about second order effects (e.g. returning home and sparking an economic revolution). Well, that posits that these people will return home. But how many do? You assert that Indians have returned home -- but Indian lobbies in the US are pushing for increased immigration and H1-B's. So obviously more are coming than leaving.

Let's throw another iron into this fire. Indians seem to concentrate on software, electrical engineering and the like. These fields give them a leg up on immigrating to a country, like the US, where they can go to work for, say, Google. Great-- they improve search engine efficiency. But suppose that the H1-B opportunity wasn't there, perhaps more of the engineeringly inclined would concentrate on civil engineering, environmental engineering, i.e. something that would be useful to a still largely third world, overcrowded, polluted land like India that lacks basic sanitation. I say, let Indian engineers stay in India and work out some basic services for their people.

I think Jos has nailed the thing. Celia wouldn't have needed to go back too far in the "brain drain" literature to find a deluge of terrified brow-beating about India's massive problem (I'd estimate the late 80s to mid-90s would be the most fruitful period) which appears now quaint-cum-ridiculous.

That said, NRIs (non-resident Indians) did not spontaneously change the work environment in their homeland. Savvy politicians and businesses strategized on ways to capture the money, expertise and influence of the NRIs--no one took it for granted that all that brain power and money would find its way back home. If this pattern could be studied and replicated by other (necessarily smaller) countries, the brain drain could indeed be the start of a beneficial "backlash" of globalization. If, however, the Indian case is more of a fluke, Mitchell and the other critics of globalization may prove to have had more of a point.

Okay, Mitchell appears to have been responding (negatively) to Jos at the same time as I was praising him.

Mitchell, you misunderstand what has taken place in India over the past 20 years. That country has, in effect, retooled its university system into an export industry. The IITs especially (I believe there are six at present) were created specifically to churn out engineers to work overseas. Did this cost the government? Yes. You can argue that India starved its poor and lower middle ranks of basic education to better serve the top ranks, who then went abroad. In the short run, this "hurt" the country. But over the years the investment has reaped great rewards, to wit:

1) Closer ties to the US than would ever have been possible. Our economies are now more closely integrated, our political systems more in sync, even our value systems are more harmonious (for instance, the Tsunami relief effort in India was massive and well-coordinated, and benefitted greatly from the NRI community).

2) A cleaner, more accountable and forward-thinking government back home. Indian politicians routinely sweep through the US in search of funds and support long before the elections back home. This has been a tremendous win-win situation.

Finally, Mitchell, while everyone knows about Indian software engineers, it's important to note that accountants and actuaries, economists and statisticians, professors and doctors, and yes writers and lawyers are also counted among their ranks.

If India suffers still (as it does) from piss-poor infrastructure, unclean water and horrid pollution, it is NOT for lack of trained engineers, but lack of political accountability. Fix that (as is now arguably happening) and there will be miraculous progress in that respect without you or anyone else telling people where they can live and work.

Here's two more variables worth controlling: the % of college graduates who receive their degrees domestically, and the size of the country.

One would expect a country like China, where most college graduates are studying domestically, to retain a higher % of college graduates. Further, one would expect that a large country, with industry in a number of areas, to retain more graduates and their specialized skills than a small country. One can do finance, engineering and education in India, but is this true, at any significant scale, in Mozambique or Haiti?

Both Kelli and Mitchell raise points about India, and the answers are mutually supporting - the reason that Indian entrepeneurs have concentrated on software (and generally non-manufacturing tech) is two fold - first, the physical infrastructure of rail, roads, electrical production, etc., that requires state investment is inadequate, and secondly, the incumbent manufacturers can strangle any upstarts with government red tape, regulations, and the like, arranged by their cronies in the government.

So government's role is two fold - provide the basic physical infrastructure, and refrain from protecting ineficient incumbants.

If both those conditions obtain then the expatriates can use what they've learned overseas and spark an economic renaisance.

But until very recently in India, both conditions meant that only entrepenuers in 'soft' industries that did not need big infrasturcture and had no domestic competitors and thus ruffled no incumbant feathers could survive and compete globally.

China a quarter century ago was similar but with two crucual differences - first, China is ringed with foriegn manufacturing heartlands, so as long as there's good port facilities, you don't need a full countrywide infrasturcture - you just ship in the piecework, use the cheap labor, then ship it out again. India is an isolated island, compared to China in this respect. Second, China's industries were all old fashioned, smokestack industries - primary production well inland, not manufacturing. So there were no entrenched competitors in coastal regions to squelch upstarts - they were welcome, as long as the Party approved & benefitted as well. Once local officals saw their vastly increased power and prestige due to the manufacturing boom they bagan to actively court and develope even their long time enemies, the Taiwainese (!).

An Africa engineer or doctor who comes to the US faces discrimination, must adapt to an alien culture and language, and lives without the emotional support system that most of us take for granted. If "we" were grinding them up and spitting them out, sending them home broke and shattered, you might have a point that there is a 'brain drain'. But that almost never happens - they thrive here. If they've got what it takes to make it here, think about how much they could do at home - if there were only the chance for them to do it there.

BTW, the next few years will provide an instructive test case to see if India's political/business climate really has changed.

Tata, one of the 800 pound gorilla's of the Indian industrial sector, has made huge moves into the BPO outsourcing/software (and other'soft') sectors and recently announced it will invest even more heavily. If the upstart expatriates who pioneered this sector are allowed to compete fairly, then things really ahve changed. If, on the other hand, they are slowly strangled by new regulations and new red tape, then its back to business as usual in India.

And we'll soon be hearing about the 'Indian brain' drain again.

The reversal of Ireland's longtime status as a remittance economy exporting its 'surplus' brains and bodies would seem to support the notion that human capital seeks venues that allow better returns on investment. When Ireland's domestic political economy finally became more investment-friendly, the brainflow reversed.

The Philippines, meanwhile, remains a politically dysfunctional economy exporting brains and bodies the way Ireland used to. Every reform movement, whether from the top or from the grassroots (or perhaps astroturf) sinks back into a swamp of corruption and cronyism.

The Philippines ranks #117 on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index. Ireland ranks #19. That seems to be one crucial distinction. It's not as if Ireland never had its share of corruption and cronyism, either. Transparency and accountability seem to be key. And so does being open to outside investors who demand accountability and can enforce it by withdrawing their investments. Protectionist shackling of the best and brightest to dysfunctional, unaccountable government bureacracies seems a recipe for nothing but periodic coups, purges, and population flight.

And Mitchell, very little of a doctor's education comes from "a poor country invest[ing] X amount of capital" in their education - its mostly either their own family's money, or the family's ability to divert some of the official corruption into an education for a family member

Wrong. Most of the money for a doctor's education, certainly in India, comes from the government. Government or government aided medical schools charge almost nothing in tution. Private medical schools tend to have far poorer facilities and teachers, and charge far higher.

Let's throw another iron into this fire. Indians seem to concentrate on software, electrical engineering and the like. These fields give them a leg up on immigrating to a country, like the US, where they can go to work for, say, Google. Great-- they improve search engine efficiency. But suppose that the H1-B opportunity wasn't there, perhaps more of the engineeringly inclined would concentrate on civil engineering, environmental engineering, i.e. something that would be useful to a still largely third world, overcrowded, polluted land like India that lacks basic sanitation. I say, let Indian engineers stay in India and work out some basic services for their people.

What nonsense. 1) the large majority of people who learn sw engineering in India do so to work in local sw companies, not to go abroad 2) India has no shortage of civil engineers or the like. What it does have a shortage of is capital and non corrupt administrators.

You distort the article by saying that brain drain is the cause of third world problems. However it is an aggravating effect which creates a positive feedback system in the sense that a bad situation causes people to flee which hurts the system.

Eventually you can lose the good schools, the resource that provides this. This has happened in Pakistan where physics is taught by rote.

African nurses migrate out at a huge rate. They are desperately needed. If there is a solution it is "systematic." Problems at many points have to be addressed.

But this is a symptom of serious failures.

I will tell you something that when you rationalize questionable situations that work to your advantage, situations such as this or that we require third world countries to mantain open markets while we use price supports and restrictoions to keep out the crops they can produce, you always feel high and mighty and good.

You rationalize.

But they will see you don't care and they will start to laugh when people kill you. Then you will start to fear the immigrants and distort the fredoms of your societies.

There is a problem, aspects of it have been documented, including some interesting feaures such as the families of immigrants from Mexico focus less on education.

But instead of looking, you want to justify everything you do as good and to attack thse who bring up problems.

This is what Republican's call "resonsibility," it means blame the other guy. We have problems in Iraq because the press says bad things. It's unfair to ask Republicans to tell the truth to investigators because Republicans are nuce guys and can lie to prosecuters and cops if they want to, it's just "normal" behavior. The president becomes elected because he promises to protect the nation, but he reduces funds to prevent one of the 3 or 4 more likely catastrophes because empty islands need 100 million dollar bridges, but it's not his fault cause the local Democrats are worser than he is.

There used to be things called honor, integrity and responsibility, but now it's always rationalization.

Can't you just look at a problem and admit it exists? Do you have to lie about what people said?

The answer is yes because you represent decadence, ou think the way to fight terrorism is to buy things and that spending your tax cuts is the height of patrotism. And when you get treated by a nurse from a country where children lack medical care, you don't think it a sad situation, but so wonderful because this is the best of all possible worlds.

Fortunatly the Chinese and Japanese are collecting all your money and when your stock markets and real estate fall they will start to buy. Of course you will try to stop it, you will complain it's not fair. Because this kind of thing is only good for other people.

You distort the article by saying that brain drain is the cause of third world problems. However it is an aggravating effect which creates a positive feedback system in the sense that a bad situation causes people to flee which hurts the system.

Eventually you can lose the good schools, the resource that provides this. This has happened in Pakistan where physics is taught by rote.

African nurses migrate out at a huge rate. They are desperately needed. If there is a solution it is "systematic." Problems at many points have to be addressed.

But this is a symptom of serious failures.

I will tell you something that when you rationalize questionable situations that work to your advantage, situations such as this or that we require third world countries to mantain open markets while we use price supports and restrictoions to keep out the crops they can produce, you always feel high and mighty and good.

You rationalize.

But they will see you don't care and they will start to laugh when people kill you. Then you will start to fear the immigrants and distort the fredoms of your societies.

There is a problem, aspects of it have been documented, including some interesting feaures such as the families of immigrants from Mexico focus less on education.

But instead of looking, you want to justify everything you do as good and to attack thse who bring up problems.

This is what Republican's call "resonsibility," it means blame the other guy. We have problems in Iraq because the press says bad things. It's unfair to ask Republicans to tell the truth to investigators because Republicans are nuce guys and can lie to prosecuters and cops if they want to, it's just "normal" behavior. The president becomes elected because he promises to protect the nation, but he reduces funds to prevent one of the 3 or 4 more likely catastrophes because empty islands need 100 million dollar bridges, but it's not his fault cause the local Democrats are worser than he is.

There used to be things called honor, integrity and responsibility, but now it's always rationalization.

Can't you just look at a problem and admit it exists? Do you have to lie about what people said?

The answer is yes because you represent decadence, ou think the way to fight terrorism is to buy things and that spending your tax cuts is the height of patrotism. And when you get treated by a nurse from a country where children lack medical care, you don't think it a sad situation, but so wonderful because this is the best of all possible worlds.

Fortunatly the Chinese and Japanese are collecting all your money and when your stock markets and real estate fall they will start to buy. Of course you will try to stop it, you will complain it's not fair. Because this kind of thing is only good for other people.

now, this is not completely related, but i am so totally sick of hearing "government corruption" as always being the top thing that right wingers site as being the reason poor countries are poor.

for my money Senator Ted Stevens is the most corrupt politician in the western world, and probably more so then most corrupt people in the poor world as well. F*ck that guy (oh yeah, and the other 89 of those bastards too):

We have a strong economy despite having no brain, and having about 89% corruption.

Prof Dan:

My we are being snarky...

Certainly this is a hypothesis worth discussing at least.

I suspect there are benefits both ways, the net is what we should consider.

Well. an old theme that is - treating everything as transparent.
A-la globalist mind 'Brain drain' is a problem, and even a problem that causes Third-world countries that are poor to become poorer.
If you support globalization you should greet this so-called 'brain drain' as one of its outcomes. Citizens of poor countries, finding themselves with an amount of money at their hands, trying to benefit from global markets by immigrating into OCED countries, find a nice job, and god-forbid buying a house or flat, live with their families and send some cash out to the rest of the gang in mother land.
Isn't that a form of human globalization? it is only obvious that occupation-related immigration will take place in an ever growing global market, just as it's obvious to all of you that a major company/corporation will eventually take the necessary actions in order to outsource its manufacture-bases abroad, to more exploitable human-resources markets at the third-world.
I understand that when individuals do the same thing in order to benefit themselves, suddenly it's problematic, unfair and even becomes a catalist-factor in third-worlds' poverty, although it is being done in a far less rate than outsourcing, and among those that do immigrate, even lesser rate finalize the citizenship process at OCED countries.
One should expect that no one even thought about the fact that among eastern and third-world population of more than several billions , only a very small fracture get the chance to attend collages or universities, or to gain the small fortune required in order to start an immigration process.

Erg,

Well, then India needs to follow the pattern prescribed by John Adams "I must study politics and war [and law?], so my children can study farming and engineering, so my grandchildren can study art and music." (or something pretty close to that) . The point remains, brain drain can distort incentives and thus damage a national economy by 1) leading people to study the wrong subjects 2) creaming off the top people . BTW the original article focussed on smaller countries such as Jamaica and Ghana that can use all the smart people they can get.

We, on the other hand, need to start incentivizing kids who would go to law school to study medicine, engineering etc by letting the wages (esp. in engineering) rise, rather than import H1-B's.

BTW -- for the mass of you internationalists, free traders, and rat choices, John Adams was the second president of the United States.

Okay, I may have gotten the quote a *little* wrong. Its

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

But the idea is the same. Note that old John didn't say that he had to study so that he could immigrate to France. Note also he sought to benefit his children and children's children, not the whole world.

I wonder, how much of the negative effect of the "brain drain" would be cancelled out if developed countries opened up their borders to unskilled labor. Those African people trying to climb their way into Ceuta did not seem to be doctors or engineers.

To "point": When people refer to "corruption" in underdeveloped countries, they are not speaking about a bunch of politicians - they mean the fact that almost every public servant is regularly bribed - from the cop giving a ticket to the nurse in the public health facility who gives out appointments to the tax inspector to... everyone. They mean people don't show up at their posts and nothing can be done about it because they're somebody's friend. Living here you take for granted stuff that is unheard of in most underdeveloped countries.

This debate was raging in Canada when I lived there about a decade ago. I found the terms of the debate creepy and probably counterproductive. To talk about a country losing or keeping "its" best minds seems to presume that in some sense the country owns these folks. And a country with that attitude seems a tempting place to leave.

To look at it another way, what about those brains that choose not to drain? Are we justified in taxing and exploiting them to the hilt just because they happen to be less mobile?

To paraphrase the elephant man, "I am not your tax base, I am a human being".

So, massive high IQ immigration is bad for the poor sending countries and low IQ immigration is bad for the receiving countries, what is massive immigration good for?

I remember reading an interesting comment on gnxp.com about this. That person said Brain Drain should be called Brain Save, because when you get talented people together, thier productivity rises non-linearly. A good brain may languish without other good brains around. Thus, good brains leaving the third world and coming to the first world helps the world as a whole more than it hurts it.

So, massive high IQ immigration is bad for the poor sending countries and low IQ immigration is bad for the receiving countries, what is massive immigration good for?

Do not confuse a person's IQ with his or her access to education, higher education, or funds necessary for immigration.