Civil War, Ethnicity, and the Migration of Skilled Labor

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We investigate the impact of civil war on high skilled emigration to the OECD over the period 1975–2000. Controlling for source country characteristics, we find that civil war increases high skilled emigration by 3–6 percentage points. Further, the nature of conflict matters: While brain drain from countries with ethnic conflict is about 5–8 percent greater than from non-conflict countries, the effect of non-ethnic conflict is less, and is not statistically significant. Duration also matters: Each additional year of ethnic conflict worsens the brain drain by 0.4–0.7 percent, whereas the duration effect from non-ethnic conflict is small and insignificant.