Karin Mayr

Brain Drain and Brain Return: Theory and Application to Eastern-Western Europe

Abstract This paper develops a novel model of optimal education, migration and return by heterogeneous, forward-looking agents. The model is parameterized and simulated to analyze the effects of immigration policies, identifying the brain-drain, brain-gain and brain-return effects when barriers to migration are reduced. We use parameters from the literature to inform our model and simulate migration and return from middle-income to industrialized countries. In particular, we apply the model to study migration and return between Eastern and Western Europe. We find that, for plausible degrees of openness, the possibility of return migration combined with the education incentive channel turns the brain drain into a brain gain for Eastern Europe.

Immigration and voting on the size and the composition of public spending

This paper develops a model to analyze the effects of immigration by skill on the outcome of a majority vote among natives on both the size as well as the composition of public spending. Public spending can be of two types, spending on rival goods (transfers) and on non-rival goods (public goods). I find that the effect of immigration on public spending depends on preferences for the different types of spending. In particular, immigrants of either skill can increase (decrease) the size of total public spending, if natives have a relative preference for spending on public goods (spending on transfers). I provide some illustration of spending patterns in OECD countries during 1980 - 2010.