Washington State is a leader in the innovation economy largely due to the combination of aerospace, software, and biomedical industries centered in the greater Seattle area; and, the state's high level of international trade. Despite Washington's national ranking, the state is overly reliant on importing educated workers from other states and…

The flight of human capital is a phenomenon that has been of concern to academics and development practitioners for decades. Unfortunately, there is no systematic record of the number of skilled professionals that many African countries have continued to lose to the developed world. Termed the "brain drain", it represents the loss of…

For more than 50 years, human capital theory has been the cornerstone for understanding the value of investing in individuals' productive capacities in terms of both personal social and economic gain and the collective benefits that accrue to society. Vedder and Denhart (2007) challenge the hypothesis that public investment in higher education…

Using primary survey data, factors influencing preferences of international graduate students in the United States as to whether they prefer to stay in the United States or go back to their home country to start their careers are examined employing discrete choice analysis. Career opportunities and social climate are critical factors. Students…

The master discourses of economic globalisation and the knowledge economy each cite knowledge diasporas as vital "trans-national human capital". Based on a case study of a major Australian university, this article examines the potential to deploy China's large and highly-skilled diaspora in the service of Chinese and Australian…

Purpose: Higher education, including research, depends crucially on the people involved, their talents and human capital. Therefore, a university can improve or at least maintain its standing by hiring only the best available academics. Hiring the absolute best may be too expensive for most and is impossible for all. However, it is not too…

In a context of intensified globalisation, knowledge diaspora as "trans-national human capital" have become increasingly valuable to society. With an awareness of a need for more empirical studies especially in Australia, this article concentrates on a group of academics who were working at a major university in Australia and came…

Talk of the rise of a global war for talent and emergence of a new global meritocracy has spread from the literature on human resource management to shape nation-state discourse on managed migration and immigration reform. This article examines the implications that the global war for talent have for education policy. Given that this talent war is…

Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well-known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training because of free-rider behaviour of firms. In the Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive dataset of Dutch firms, we attempt to…

This paper presents a model where human capital differences--rather than technology differences--can explain several central phenomena in the world economy. The results follow from the educational choices of workers, who decide not just how long to train, but also how broadly. A "knowledge trap" occurs in economies where skilled workers favor…

The international recruitment by countries of the North of teachers from less developed countries has become a controversial aspect of the problem of "brain drain". As a political and economic issue, the argument is that it reduces human capital within the education system and leads to the movement of highly skilled teachers from…

The "brain drain" phenomenon is typically seen as a zero-sum game, where one party's gain is presumed to be another's drain. This corresponds to deep-seated assumptions about what is "home" and what is "away". This article challenges the view, driven by much "brain drain" literature, that the dynamic is an…

Recent economic and technological developments have led to a growing international demand for highly skilled human resources. The increased competition for human capital has determined numerous OECD countries to take special measures for attracting and retaining human capital in such fields as: information technology, biotechnology,…

Rural communities are increasingly being faced with the prospect of accepting facilities characterized as "opportunity-threat," such as facilities that generate, treat, store, or otherwise dispose of hazardous wastes. Such facilities may offer economic gains through jobs and tax revenue, although they may also act as environmental "disamenities."…

During the past several decades, child poverty rates have been higher in rural than in urban areas, and now 2.5 million children live in deep poverty in rural America. Studies indicate that poor children are most affected by the typical "summer slide." Summer programming has the ability to address the issues of academic loss, nutritional…