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At a time when migration policy has moved to the centre of national and European policy agendas, the three Baltic states are taking their first steps towards building a cohesive policy response to emigration. This is especially important in the wake of the global financial crisis, which generated an increased outflow from the Baltic states.

The Baltic states are facing variety of challenges in part caused by this movement of mainly working-age men and women: demographic issues related to an ageing society, labour market challenges and social security system sustainability. Within this context, the discussion of human resource losses is growing in the public sphere in the Baltic states.

Based on interviews with experts in labour and migration in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and a review of key national policy documents, this article analyses the commonalities among and differences between these three countries’ national responses.

Despite some variations in the characteristics and extent of emigration from the three countries, the interviewed experts agree that the European Union’s policy of free mobility is socially and economically problematic. As the interviews indicate, there have been strong calls in Latvia and Lithuania for a more cohesive intra-European migration management policy to address current imbalances between EU member states and ensure that the loss of human resources in sending countries is accounted for in the recruitment policies of receiving countries. On another hand, Estonia experiences more circular movement patterns and demonstrates a rather liberal view towards migration issues, seeing a virtue in the (regional) open market.

Using data for a set of 32 Sub-Saharan countries over the years 2000, 2005 and 2010, the paper investigates the effects of domestic governmental stability upon emigration and assesses whether education and gender shape the relationship.

The paper adopts instrumental variable (IV) Poisson regressions and two-stage least squares (2SLS) as robustness tests.

The paper suggests that increased governmental stability has a larger impact on the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Nevertheless, once emigrants are partitioned according to both education and gender, the authors find evidence of a larger impact of stability on the emigration of highly educated females.

The empirical findings may lack generalizability because of the chosen research approach. Then, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications that can be drawn for both the growth and the development of Sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how both education and gender shape the relationship between domestic governmental stability and emigration.

The purpose of this paper is to review the emigration situation after the socialist regime and to reveal the main reasons for emigration in present-day Lithuania answering the question why “the West is still the best” remains important to modern Lithuania.

Statistical analysis of emigration during 1980-2015 in Lithuania was presented. Reasons for emigration were identified through a review of the scientific literature on emigration theories and push-pull factors. A questionnaire was prepared according to the proposed model to reveal the main reasons for Lithuanian emigration. In total, 1,586 migrants from Lithuania participated in the survey during October-November 2015.

The results revealed the main reasons for emigration according to push and pull factors related to economic issues, such as too low wages, differences between wages and income inequality, price policies and unemployment rates. However, non-economic reasons, particularly having relatives living abroad, influence the decision to migrate as well. A comparative analysis was made according to respondents’ occupation in the home country, their age and gender. In addition, it was found that emigration has become a community value and norm in Lithuania.

The study was conducted over the internet. Therefore, only people using the internet participated in this study. Moreover, it is noted that only 21 percent of the respondents were male.

Based on migration theories, a list of push and pull migration reasons were identified. The findings present the main reasons for migration, which are based not only on statistical data, but also on survey responses in the case of Lithuania. Differences among demographic groups of respondents according to their occupation, gender and age were highlighted and targeted solutions could be applied in practice. Potential measures for decreasing emigration could also be designed based on these findings.

Migration was proposed as a community value and norm in Lithuania.

Based on the migration theories and a questionnaire survey, the paper discusses reasons for emigration after the end of the socialist regime in Lithuania concentrating on the main reasons for emigration in contemporary Lithuania. In addition, it offers insights into demographic differences in reasons for emigration in relation to occupation, age and gender.

This study aims to bring some additional insight into the issue of emigration by establishing a relationship between emigration and psychic return of citizens to their human capital investment in the country.

The article adopts a quantitative research strategy. It applies organizational commitment and human capital theories to the study of emigration.

The article provides evidence for the fact that psychic return to human capital investment in the country has significant relationship with emigration level from this country. At the same time, of all variables that comprise this type of return to HC investment, only two variables were found to be statistically significant: national GDP and access to education in the country.

The findings provide some evidence for the fact that emigration from a country cannot be reduced unless people in the country have the ability to lead an economically comfortable life and have access to education. Those countries that experience significant emigration need to turn their attention to developing and implementing sound economic and educational reforms. Emigration will be reduced as a result. A significant limitation of this research is the fact that not all the world countries were included in the analysis. Although the authors did their best to get data for as many countries as possible, the absence of data for some countries allowed for the research using fewer countries than desired.

This article utilizes organizational commitment and human capital theories. The combination of these two theories of social research allows a unique look at emigration.

Using aggregated data at the municipality level allows the authors to assess the role of relative deprivation (RD) – a measure of income inequality – on top of absolute income in shaping internal migration in Austria.

In this study, the authors analyse the effect of regional income inequality on emigration rates of Austrian municipalities using a unique spatial dataset that is constructed based on Austrian administrative register data. The register-based data contain information on the municipality of residence of all individuals aged 16 and over that have their main residency in Austria, as well as their income and socio-demographic characteristics.

The authors find that increases in relative deprivation in a municipality are related to higher emigration from the municipality. Allowing for heterogeneous effects across income, education and age groups reveals that the effect is stronger among those with comparably low levels of income and among low-skilled and young individuals.

The unique spatially disaggregated perspective is based on novel data from Austrian administrative registers, which comprehensively capture the economic situation and geographic movements of the whole Austrian population. Most importantly, this approach allows for measuring income inequality within local communities and for a direct identification of social groups that are more sensitive to inequality.

Owing to lack of relevant data on health human resource (HHR) migration, the empirical dimension of the health-worker crisis debate has remained void despite abundant theoretical literature. A health worker crisis is growing in the world. Shortages in health professionals are reaching staggering levels in many parts of the globe. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A quantile regression approach is used to examine the determinants of health-worker emigration throughout the conditional distributions of health-worker emigration. This provides an investigation of the determinants when existing emigrations levels matter. The author assesses the determinants of emigration in the health sector through-out the conditional distribution of HHR emigration.

The findings have been presented in two main strands: when existing emigration levels are low and when existing emigration levels are high. In the former case (when existing emigration levels are low), wealth-effects have the following implications. First, while economic prosperity is a good tool against nurse brain drain in middle income countries (MICs), health expenditure is a good instrument against physician brain drain in low income countries (LICs). Second, whereas positive demographic change fuels the problem in LICs, it mitigates the issue in their MIC counterparts. Third, savings, government-effectiveness, foreign-aid and inflationary pressures only accentuate the problem for both income groups. Fourth, corruption-control becomes a vital tool for emigration-control in both income-brackets. Fifth, while trade openness mitigates physician emigration in LICs, financial openness has the opposite effect on nurse emigration. In the latter case (when existing immigration levels are high), the following conclusions have been drawn. First, While economic prosperity fights nurse emigration only in LICs, savings is a tool against physician emigration only in their MIC counterparts. Second, health expenditure and inflationary pressures are relevant tools in the battle against physician resource flight. Third, whereas, government effectiveness is an important policy measure for mitigating emigration in LICs, human development plays a similar role in MICs. Fourth, democracy, press-freedom, foreign-aid and financial openness fuel emigration in either income strata. Fifth, population growth and trade openness are important tools in the fight against brain-drain. Sixth, the HIV infection rate is a deterrent only to nurse emigration.

This paper complements existing literature by empirically investigating the World Health Organization hypothetical determinants of health-worker migration in the context of globalization when income-levels matter. In plainer terms, the work explores how the wealth of exporting countries play-out in the determinants of HHR emigration.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research.

The study singles out a core assumption underlying much of the recent literature, calling it the “Lump of Learning model” of human capital and development, and describes five ways that research has come to challenge that assumption. It assesses the usefulness of that model in the face of accumulating evidence.

The axioms of the Lump of Learning model have shaped research priorities in this literature, but many of those axioms do not have a clear empirical basis. Future research proceeding from established facts would set different priorities, and would devote more attention to measuring the effects of migration on skilled migrant households, rigorously estimating human capital externalities, gathering microdata beyond censuses, and carefully considering optimal policy – among others.

The recent literature has pursued a series of extensions to the Lump of Learning model. This study urges instead discarding that model, pointing toward a new paradigm for research on skilled migration and development.

How do economic prosperity, health expenditure, savings, price-stability, demographic change, democracy, corruption control, press freedom, government effectiveness, human development, foreign aid, physical security, trade openness and financial liberalization play-out in the fight against health-worker crisis when existing emigration levels matter? Despite the acute concern of health-worker crisis in Africa owing to emigration, lack of relevant data has made the subject matter empirically void over the last decades. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A quantile regression approach is used to assess the determinants of health-worker emigration throughout the conditional distributions of health-worker emigration. This provides an assessment of the determinants when existing emigrations levels matter.

Findings provide a broad range of tools for the fight against health-worker brain-drain. As a policy implication, blanket emigration-control policies are unlikely to succeed equally across countries with different levels of emigration. Thus to be effective, immigration policies should be contingent on the prevailing levels of the crisis and tailored differently across countries with the best and worst records on fighting health-worker emigration.

This paper has examined the theoretical postulations of a World Health Organization report on determinants of health-worker migration.

This paper aims to present a theoretical underpinning for the fact that empirical studies have found an inverted-U curve relationship between emigration and per capita income, based on credit restrictions. The implications for tax policy are also analyzed.

Using an intertemporal general equilibrium model, the authors characterize how the presence of an “inverted U-curve” relationship between emigration and per capita income will influence the optimal tax and expenditure policy in a country where agents have the option to move abroad.

Among the results it is shown that if age-dependent taxes are available, the presence of an inverted-U curve provides an incentive to tax young labor harder, but old labor less hard, than otherwise.

This migration model fits the empirical facts of migration better than most of the migration models previously used in the optimal taxation literature.

This paper aims to examine whether emigration of high-skilled labor creates a positive effect in the home country by generating multi-country joint patent relationships between home and destination country-pairs.

A panel of data that uniquely captures the country of origin of patent applicants is used to assess if and how high-skilled emigration contributes to the prevalence of multi-country joint patents in a country. The analysis is conducted both in aggregate and across sub-samples based on the per capita income level of the home country. Finally, the role of absorptive capacity as a control variable is robustly considered.

Results suggest that emigration of high-skilled labor positively impacts the prevalence of multi-country joint patent ownership when emigration originates from middle- and high-income countries. Support for such “brain gain” via knowledge sharing in innovation is absent when high-skilled labor emigrates from low-income countries.

The analysis highlights a specific avenue by which the home country benefits from high-skilled emigration. It also provides comparative analysis across home countries of different income levels, which can provide insight into the external validity of papers using high-income country samples of innovative performance when assessing knowledge spillovers.