Economic analysis of brain drain

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the brain drain problem arising from the possibility of signaling and individual's two-stage decision procedures within an asymmetric information framework. Where the ranking of the universities provides a signal to domestic employers, our results indicate that, at rational expectations equilibrium, there is an association between students of a particular quality and corresponding qualities of universities they will choose to attend to attain Ph.D.'s. Moreover, we can predict whether these graduating Ph.D.'s choose to return home or remain abroad.