Analyzing the association between high human-capital emigration and economic development

Abstract

While the association between high human-capital emigration rates and economic development has been analyzed many times in the past, it is not until recently that sufficiently complete data sets have emerged to allow for large international analyses. Unfortunately, many of these analyses do not account for issues of governance, leading to contradictory findings. In addition, the literature has overwhelmingly focused on singular measures of economic development, such as GDP per capita. Using OLS multiple regression, this study seeks to examine the association between high human-capital emigration rates and multiple indicators of economic development at two different time frames. Results indicate that emigration rates are significantly negativelyassociated with most measures of economic development at low levels of democratization. However, these effects are not strong enough to predict changes in economic development for most of the indicators analyzed. Moreover, these effects are not always consistent over time.