Investing in Knowledge: On the Trade-Off between R&D, ICT, Skills and Migration

This paper deals with the complementarity between skills and knowledge by investigating particularly tacit knowledge flows between countries and regions. The main findings are threefold. First, there seems to exist a trade-off between acquiring knowledge through performing and putting effort in R&D and through investing into access to the public knowledge basin. Secondly, migration of high-skilled labour from South to North appears, as a result of the introduction and rapid evolution of ICT, no longer a dominant trend. Finally, the observed trade-off goes hand in hand with the accumulation and formation of tacit knowledge.