Can Intellectual Property Rights Protection Generate Brain Gain from International Migration?

This paper studies the interaction between international migration and intellectual property rights (IPR) in determining innovation performance of developing countries. Although emigration may directly cause brain drain, it generates a flow of knowledge acquired by emigrants abroad back to their home countries, which could be better absorbed under sound IPR institutions. IPRs thus work as a moderating factor to overcome brain drain by creating the conditions to better absorb potential gains from migration. Using a panel dataset of emerging and developing countries, we establish a positive correlation between emigration and innovation when IPRs are sufficiently strong