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This paper analyzes the interaction of international migration of high-skilled labor and relative wage income between source and destination economies of expatriates. We develop an overlapping-generations model with increasing returns which suggests that international integration of the market for skilled labor aggravates between-country inequality by harming those which are source economies to begin with while benefiting host economies. The result is robust to allowing governments to optimally adjust productivity-enhancing investments which could potentially attenuate brain drain. Optimal public investment tends to decrease in response to higher emigration.

In the year 2000, 20.4 million tertiary educated immigrants lived in OECD countries, up from about 12.5 million in the year 1990 (Docquier and Marfouk, 2006). Half of the skilled migrants resided in the US and about a quarter in other Anglo-Saxon countries. Liberalization of international labor markets continues, particularly for high-skilled workers. New regulation in developed countries, such as the “blue card” scheme adopted by the Council of Europe in May 2009, tends to reduce immigration barriers for high-skilled labor. Thus, the outflow of skilled individuals from developing countries may further increase in the near future. The European Commission has also raised concerns, however, that high-skilled emigration could harm developing regions which are already suffering from brain drain such as the Caribbean, Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In this paper we analyzed the dynamic interaction between migration of high-skilled workers and relative wage income between source and destination economies of expatriates. Our theoretical model showed that a decline in mobility costs not only intensifies the emigration pressure for economies already suffering from brain drain, but also adversely affects total factor productivity in the source economy. Therefore it may give rise to future emigration. The result holds true also if economies optimally adjust their productivity-enhancing public expenditure levels, possibly financed by public deficits. Hence, our analysis suggests that integration of labor markets for high-skilled workers accentuates between-country wage income inequality. Therefore, the recent movement of the EU to attract high-skilled workers may have first-order detrimental effects even for skilled workers in developing countries. One cannot rule out, however, that countries which have seen a large outflow of skilled workers in the more recent past may benefit in the longer run from return migration, remittances, or increased education levels.