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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Should I stay or should I go? An institutional approach to brain drain
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Lea Cassar
  • Bruno Frey
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
Number No. 489
ISSN 1424-0459
Date 2010
Abstract Text This paper suggests that institutional factors which reward social networks at the expenses of productivity can play an important role in explaining brain drain. The effects of social networks on brain drain are analyzed in a decision theory framework with asymmetric information. We distinguish between the role of insidership and personal connections. The larger the cost of being an outsider, the smaller is the number and the average ability of researchers working in the domestic job market. Personal connections partly compensate for this effect by attracting highly connected researchers back. However, starting from a world with no distortions, personal connections also increase brain drain.
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