“BRAIN DRAIN” AS A GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROBLEM

Abstract

When a county is not capable of retaining its best educated citizens, then we speak of the phenomenon called ―brain drain‖. In the resent conditions of economy, more efficient use of knowledge in relation to other competitors is the base of success for economic protagonists on the global market. In modern societies, education and training, i.e. knowledge and skills have been key components of individual and economic productivity as a whole for a long time. Many relatively rich countries nowadays have made progress primarily thanks to investment in education and training. It turned out that investment in knowledge in contemporary conditions of manufacturing marked the most prosperous investment. Today, the most developed countries worldwide are those that have greater participation of education costs in the structure of gross domestic product. However, the knowledge per se is not capable of transforming economy, i.e. of generating economic growth and development. Education thus becomes a specific centre of knowledge society, while schooling is its key institution. This assumption increasingly gains significance in leading world enterprises. The real competitive advantage of enterprises will include their capability for faster and better learning in comparison to competition, for gathering, disseminating and permanently increasing their knowledge. The knowledge and experience acquired in various investigations circulates throughout the world, and the leading world enterprises efficiently use them. Based on Global Competitive Index and Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) the paper firstly investigates the dependence of gross domestic product per capita (GDP pc) and Knowledge Economy Index at the global level. Then, the attention is directed to detection of dependence of economic growth upon efficient use of talent (also at global level in the period 2006-2014). Finally, the paper investigates the dependence of Global Competitiveness Index on the composite variable which is obtained as the arithmetic mean of the average value of two scalar indicators: a) Country capacity to retain and b) Country capacity to attract talents at global level in the period 2013-2017. This led to the conclusion that at global level, the positive correlation was present between the Knowledge Economy Index and efficient use of talent on the one hand, and gross domestic product per capita on the other. Also, the positive correlation was confirmed between the Country capacity to retain and attract talents and competitiveness of a country. These positive correlations were perceived as obvious, and the relation of GDP per capita appeared as polynomial function (since GDP per capita was usually modelled as always positive value).