Spatial Mobility in Elite Academic Institutions in Economics : the Case of Spain

Abstract

Using a dataset of 3,540 economists working in 2007 in 125 of the best academic centers in 22 countries, this paper presents some evidence on spatial mobility patterns in Spain and other countries conditional on some personal, department, and country characteristics. We define the net effect of a country as the difference between the effect of working in 2007 in the country on the probability of becoming brain gained and the effect of being born in the country on the probability of becoming brain drained. The main result is that the net effect of Spain is greater than the net effect of comparable large, continental European countries, i.e. Germany, France, and Italy, where economists have similar opportunities for publishing their research in English or in their own languages. On the other hand, the net average probability in a given country is defined as the difference between the average estimated probability of brain gain and the average estimated probability of brain drain in that country. We find that the net average probability in Spain is only below that of the U.S., but it is greater than that of Germany, France or Italy. We suggest that these results can be mostly explained by the governance changes introduced in a number of Spanish institutions in 1975-1990 by a sizable contingent of Spanish economists coming back home after attending graduate school abroad. These initiatives were also favored by the availability of resources to finance certain research related activities, including international Ph.D. programs.