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Civil War, Ethnicity, and the Migration of Skilled Labor

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Abstract

We investigate the impact of civil war on high skilled emigration to the OECD over the period 1975–2000. Controlling for source country characteristics, we find that civil war increases high skilled emigration by 3–6 percentage points. Further, the nature of conflict matters: While brain drain from countries with ethnic conflict is about 5–8 percent greater than from non-conflict countries, the effect of non-ethnic conflict is less, and is not statistically significant. Duration also matters: Each additional year of ethnic conflict worsens the brain drain by 0.4–0.7 percent, whereas the duration effect from non-ethnic conflict is small and insignificant.

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Notes

  1. Commander et al. [2004], Docquier and Rapoport [2008], and Beine et al. [2008a] for an idea of recent trends in the brain drain literature.

  2. Beine et al. [2010] and the references therein.

  3. Sambanis [2001] and the references in Eck [2009]. For an argument against the separation of ethnic and non-ethnic conflict, see King [2001].

  4. Kirschner [2009] finds that 80 percent of all civil wars that last longer than 15 years are ethnic conflicts.

  5. Kreutz [2010] estimates that ethnic civil wars are 11 percent more likely to recur on the average than non-ethnic civil wars.

  6. Eck [2009] finds that episodes of political violence where participants mobilize along the lines of ethnicity are 92 percent more likely to escalate into civil war than non-ethnically mobilized conflicts.

  7. Sambanis [2001] and Eck [2009] for more detailed discussions.

  8. Posen [1993] as the key reference on the security dilemma and its role in ethnic conflict.

  9. This data set may be accessed by visiting, http://perso.uclouvain.be/frederic.docquier/oxlight.htm.

  10. On one hand, an increase in GDP per capita in the source country reduces international income differentials and hence the incentive to migrate. On the other hand, it increases the ability to incur the costs of migration and hence, increases the incentive to migrate. Together, the two effects induce a non-monotonic response of skilled migration to GDP per capita. See Vogler and Rotte [2000] for more on the issue.

  11. We reach the same conclusions when we bring in the two GDP terms. These results are available on request.

  12. These data are made publicly available by the World Bank, http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:20649465~pagePK:64214825~piPK:64214943~theSitePK:469382,00.html.

  13. For a more detailed description of the CNTS data see Banks [2010] or, http://www.databanksinternational.com/.

  14. Bang and Mitra [2011] note that the impacts of institutions on the brain drain may be more complex than can be captured with a unidimensional index. As a robustness check, we have also estimated our model using additional institutional variables that capture more fully the various dimensions of institutional quality, albeit using a more restrictive sample. The results are nearly identical to the results obtained with fewer institutional controls.

  15. This includes the categories internal armed conflict and internationalized internal armed conflict in the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. For more information, refer to the codebook available at the UCDP webpage: http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/data_and_publications/datasets.htm.

  16. This includes the categories revolutionary war and ethnic war in the PITF State Failure Problem Set. For more information, consult the codebook at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm.

  17. This conditional mean can be calculated by dividing the mean duration of ethnic (non-ethnic) conflict for the entire sample by the proportion of countries experiencing ethnic (non-ethnic) conflict.

  18. The fatality index (MAGFIGHT) used in this paper takes the value 0 for less than 100 fatalities; 1 for 100–1,000 fatalities; 2 for 1,000–5,000 fatalities; 3 for 5,000–10,000 fatalities; and 4 if the number of battle-related deaths exceed 10,000. See page 8 of the PITF Problem Set Codebook for this and the other indices MAGFIGHT and MAGAREA.

  19. The calculations are available on request.

  20. When we estimate the model using ordinary least squares, the effect of per capita GDP is negative and statistically significant at the 0.05 level. However, not surprisingly, this has a noticeable impact on the measured effects of conflict. Results from this exercise are available on request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Finance, Economics, and Decision Sciences, St. Ambrose University, 518 W. Locust Street, Davenport, 52803, IA, USA

    James T Bang

  2. Division of Social Studies, Economics Program, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, 12504, NY, USA

    Aniruddha Mitra

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  1. James T Bang
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Bang, J., Mitra, A. Civil War, Ethnicity, and the Migration of Skilled Labor. Eastern Econ J 39, 387–401 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2012.18

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