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Begin New Search Topic Development Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

1. From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation and Linkage

Author:
Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie Moon
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The development community has increased its focus on higher education over the past two decades, recognizing that education can contribute to building up a country’s capacity for participation in an increasingly knowledge-based world economy and accelerate economic growth. The value added by higher education to economies—job creation, innovation, enhanced entrepreneurship, and research, a core higher education activity—has been highlighted by an important body of literature. Yet experts remain concerned that investing in higher education in less-developed countries may lead to a “brain drain”--highly educated students and professionals permanently leaving their home countries. In the 2016 Kauffman report on international science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students in the United States, for instance, 48 percent among a randomly sampled survey of 2,322 foreign doctoral students in the United States wished to stay there after graduation, with only 12 percent wanting to leave and 40.5 percent being undecided. In fact, high percentages of foreign students in the United States with doctorates in science and engineering continue to stay in the United States, creating a brain drain problem for the sending countries. Because students tend to move from developing to developed countries to study, brain drain is more problematic for developing countries. In addition, given accelerated talent flows around the world and the increasing integration of less-developed countries into global value chains, the negative impact of brain drain could be further amplified. As demonstrated by the studies reviewed in this paper, the migration of high-skilled professionals from developing countries may indeed create brain drain for them, but at the same time can significantly enhance the social and economic development of their home countries, regardless of whether or not they decide to return home, thus complicating what used to be seen as a straightforward case of brain drain. From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation and Linkage examines how brain drain can contribute to development for the sending countries through brain circulation and linkage. It provides an overview of the conceptual framework to map out high-skilled labor flows, identifies empirical cases and policies in Asia that demonstrate high-skilled migrant professionals actually make significant contributions to their home countries (beyond monetary remittances), summarizes key social and economic enabling factors that are important in attracting and motivating migrant high-skilled professionals to return or engage with their home countries, and concludes with policy implications and suggestions for further research based on these findings.
Topic:
Development, Education, Higher Education, and Socioeconomics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Do Chinese Really Save Too Much? Aspects from Total Factor Productivity Growth in China since 1952

Author:
Qiong Zhang and Chong-En Bai
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
China's economic growth over the past three decades is unprecedented. Although this growth is commonly attributed to a high domestic savings rate among “thrifty” Chinese, savings alone cannot promote economic growth unless productivity has continuously grown for such a long period. This article uses a one-sector, neoclassical growth model to calibrate the economy to Chinese data since 1952 and finds that measuring changes in total factor productivity between 1952 and 2005 can well capture the secular movements in the Chinese savings rate. Far from supporting the widespread belief that China's savings rate is too high, this article argues that even thrifty Chinese “under-saved” for most of the years during this period; furthermore, the fiscal reforms of 1983 and 1985 further suppressed saving behavior, especially China's economic growth over the past three decades is unprecedented. Although this growth is commonly attributed to a high domestic savings rate among “thrifty” Chinese, savings alone cannot promote economic growth unless productivity has continuously grown for such a long period. This article uses a one-sector, neoclassical growth model to calibrate the economy to Chinese data since 1952 and finds that measuring changes in total factor productivity between 1952 and 2005 can well capture the secular movements in the Chinese savings rate. Far from supporting the widespread belief that China's savings rate is too high, this article argues that even thrifty Chinese “under-saved” for most of the years during this period; furthermore, the fiscal reforms of 1983 and 1985 further suppressed saving behavior, especially when initially implemented. In presenting such findings, this article at least partly solves the so-called “Chinese savings puzzle.”
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Monetary Policy
Political Geography:
China

3. The Imbalance between Patient Needs and the Limited Competence of Top-Level Health Providers in Urban China: An Empirical Study

Author:
Qunhong Shen, Liyang Tang, Yilin Feng, and Jenny Tang
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The increasing importance of patient satisfaction is a common trend for the global health delivery system. This development is one of the consequences of wider social movements toward consumerism (Sitzia and Wood 1997) and also is the result of the new public management (Christoffer 2002).
Topic:
Communism, Development, Government, and Health Care Policy
Political Geography:
China

4. Longevity, Capital Formation and Economic Development

Author:
Qiong Zhang
Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Many researchers have concluded that longer life expectancies prompt increased investment in education, as a prolonged labor supply raises the rate of return on education. Besides explaining the empirical evidence behind this conclusion (at an absolute level), there is another issue to be discussed: does time spent in studying and working increase proportionally with higher longevity? Building on an extended life-cycle model with an assumption on a more realistic distribution of life cycle mortality rates, this article considers dynamic effects of prolonging longevity on economic development by directly introducing changes in longevity into the economy, which is more preferable than comparative static analysis that relies on changes in relevant parameters. It shows that prolonged life expectancy will cause individuals to increase their time in education but may not warrant rises in labor input. Later we show that higher improvement rate of longevity will also promote economic growth, even we exclude the mechanism of human capital formation, and only consider growth effects of higher improvement rate of life expectancy from physical capital investment.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Education, Health, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom

5. Early-Stage Valuation in the Biotechnology Industry

Author:
Vinay Ranade
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Biotechnology (or biotech) has impacted almost every aspect of human life. It has reorganized industries, drastically changed healthcare, helped to improve the environment, and led to important changes in laws and ethical norms.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Health, and Science and Technology

6. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges

Author:
Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

7. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Water Management Reform and the Choice of Contractual Form in China

Author:
Siwa Msangi, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jikin Huang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper explains the puzzling fact that in organizing the management of surface water, village leaders have provided incentives to canal managers in some areas, but not in all. Our study indicates that the optimal contractual choice depends on the relative abilities of the leader and the manager, the design of the cultivated land, the characteristics of the canal system and the opportunity costs of the leader and the pool of managerial candidates. The unifying mechanism is the relative change in the ability of the leader and manager to perform the unmarketable activities that are needed to provide irrigation services.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China

9. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

10. Program for the Study of Biofuels, Poverty and Food Security

Author:
Jikun Huang, Mark Rosengrant, Rosamond Naylor, Walter P. Falcon, David Victor, Kenneth Cassman, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The recent global expansion of biofuels production is an intense topic of discussion in both the popular and academic press. Much of the debate surrounding biofuels has focused on narrow issues of energy efficiency and fossil fuel substitution, to the exclusion of broader questions concerning the effects of large-scale biofuels development on commodity markets, land use patterns, and the global poor. There is reason to think these effects will be very large. The majority of poor people living in chronic hunger are net consumers of staple food crops; poor households spend a large share of their budget on starchy staples; and as a result, price hikes for staple agricultural commodities have the largest impact on poor consumers. For example, the rapidly growing use of corn for ethanol in the U.S. has recently sent corn prices soaring, boosting farmer incomes domestically but causing riots in the streets of Mexico City over tortilla prices. Preliminary analysis suggests that such price movements, which directly threaten hundreds of millions of households around the world, could be more than a passing phenomenon. Rapid biofuels development is occurring throughout the developed and developing world, transforming commodity markets and increasingly linking food prices to a volatile energy sector. Yet there remains little understanding of how these changes will affect global poverty and food security, and an apprehension on the part of many governments as to whether and how to participate in the biofuels revolution.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Globalization, Government, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States and Mexico