Highly Skilled Migration Flows: A Case Study of Taiwan

Abstract

The largest type of international migration is the movement of people from developing to developed countries. This extensive global migration has raised concerns of brain drain, where highly skilled students and professionals leave their home countries and never return. While highly skilled migration may indeed create a brain drain, it simultaneously promotes the development of the home country. This paper uses the case study of Taiwan to demonstrate that the emigration of highly skilled individuals enhances the development of the sending country through return migration, transnational workers, and diaspora networks. To analyze the impacts that migration has had on the development of Taiwan, regression techniques are implemented. The empirical findings of the paper show that once transnational networks were developed, migration outflows led to an increase in the overall output of Taiwan.