RETURN MIGRATION AFTER BRAIN DRAIN: A SIMULATION APPROACH 1.0.0
The Brain Drain phenomenon is particularly heterogeneous and is characterized by peculiar specifications. It influences the economic fundamentals of both the country of origin and the host one in terms of human capital accumulation. Here, the brain drain is considered from a microeconomic perspective: more precisely we focus on the individual rational decision to return, referring it to the social capital owned by the worker. The presented model simulate agents’ migration and their eventual return by comparing utility levels both at home and abroad. In particular, it is based on two fundamental individual features, i.e. risk aversion and initial expectation, which characterize the dynamics of different agents according to the evolution of their social contacts. Through the simulation, according to the value of risk aversion and initial expectation, it is possible to verify that the probability of return migration depends on their ratio, with a certain degree of approximation: when risk aversion is much bigger than the initial expectation, the probability of returns is maximal, while, in the opposite case, the probability for the agents to remain abroad is very high. In between, when the two values are comparable, it does exist a broad intertwined region where it is very difficult to draw any analytical forecast.
