Research issues in the international migration of highly skilled workers: a perspective with data from the United States

Abstract

This paper provides a checklist and discussion of the benefits and cost of highly skilled migrants for both sending and receiving countries. When possible it tries to analyse or illustrate these nation-level benefits and costs using data on scientists and engineers in the U.S. labor market or in U.S. graduate education. In contrast to discussions of "brain drain", it is clear that there are many benefits of high-skill migration for sending countries, as well as some negatives for receiving countries. In addition, the greatest gains from migration may not occur at the nation-state level, but globally from gains in knowledge transfer and efficiency.