Bidding for brains : intellectual property rights and the international migration of knowledge workers

Carol McAusland; Peter Kuhn

We introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of Nash equilibrium IPR policy choice among countries. We show that governments have incentives to use IPRs in a bidding war for global talent, resulting in Nash equilibrium IPRs that can be too high, rather than too low, from a global welfare perspective. These incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth, thus allowing them to prevent the 'poaching' of their 'brains' by larger, wealthier markets. -- Intellectual property rights ; development ; brain drain ; international labor migration

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Year of publication:	2010
Authors:	McAusland, Carol ; Kuhn, Peter Joseph
Publisher:	Bonn : IZA
Subject:	Arbeitsmigranten \| Migrant workers \| Qualifikation \| Occupational qualification \| Immaterialgüterrechte \| Intellectual property rights \| Arbeitsnachfrage \| Labor demand \| Wettbewerb \| Competition \| Brain Drain \| Brain drain \| Theorie \| Theory