Comment on Per Lundborg

Abstract

In the last two decades or so the academic literature on the economics of international labor flows has largely focused on the welfare and distributional effects of inflows of relatively poorly educated people into rich countries. The sending country’s perspective has been adopted much less frequently and if so in a less rigorous way. This is a pity because the potential adverse effects of the brain drain could be dramatic for poor source countries, while the effect may be small in already rich receiving countries. Moreover, the numbers suggest that at least in some parts of the developing world the brain drain is certainly not negligible; see the data recently compiled and described in Docquier and Marfouk (2004). Hence, it is certainly most welcome if theorists and empirical researchers become interested in modeling the source country effects of emigration. Fortunately, this conference volume contains a contribution that does exactly this.