Journal Article

The selection of high-skilled emigrants

Authors

Publication date

Dec 2017

Summary

We measure selection among high-skilled emigrants from Germany using predicted earnings. Migrants to less equal countries are positively selected relative to nonmigrants, while migrants to more equal countries are negatively selected, consistent with the prediction in Borjas (1987). Positive selection to less equal countries reflects university quality and grades, and negative selection to more equal countries reflects university subject and gender. Migrants to the United States are highly positively selected and concentrated in STEM fields. Our results highlight the relevance of the Borjas model for high-skilled individuals when credit constraints and other migration barriers are unlikely to be binding.

Published in

Review of Economics and Statistics

Volume and page numbers

99 , 776 -792

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00687

Subjects

Migration, Labour Market, Wages And Earnings, and Higher Education

Notes

Open Access; © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.

#525022