IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/eaerev/0354.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High-Skilled Inventor Emigration as a Moderator for Increased Innovativeness and Growth in Sending Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Kim, Jisong

    (University of Suwon)

  • Lee, Nah Youn

    (Duke University)

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of high-skilled inventor emigration rate on growth rate of the country of origin (COO). Inventor emigrants represent the human capital that can generate highly innovative work. The social network they form spurs knowledge diffusion and technology transfer back to their COOs, which in turn affects innovation and growth in their home countries. We run dynamic panel estimation for 154 countries during 1990–2011, and empirically show that a positive and statistically significant effect exists for the interaction of inventor emigration and trade. The result indicates that the direct negative impact of the brain drain can be mitigated by the positive feedback effect generated by the high-skilled inventor emigrants abroad. When coupled with an active trade policy that reinforces growth, countries can partially recoup the direct effect of the human capital loss. We stress the importance of international trade for successful technology transfer to occur, and offer insights for policies that can utilize the benefits of the rich social network of their high-skilled emigrants.

Suggested Citation

  • Kim, Jisong & Lee, Nah Youn, 2019. "High-Skilled Inventor Emigration as a Moderator for Increased Innovativeness and Growth in Sending Countries," East Asian Economic Review, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, vol. 23(1), pages 3-26, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:eaerev:0354
    DOI: 10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2019.23.1.354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2019.23.1.354
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.11644/KIEP.EAER.2019.23.1.354?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    High-skilled Inventor Emigration; Technology Transfer; Innovativeness; Growth Rate; Externalities; Networks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O50 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:eaerev:0354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: JE Lee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/kieppkr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.