HRSDC-IC-SSHRC Skills Research Initiative

Working Paper Series

Highly Skilled Workers: Build, Share, or Buy?
by John Helliwell.

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Abstract

This paper summarizes some recent empirical research relating to the determination and consequences of the international mobility of highly skilled workers. Building on this base, the paper attempts to compare the costs and benefits of international migration with those of alternative means of developing national pools of applicable skills. The paper integrates a selected body of research while also attempting to place the Canadian research and policy implications into a broader international context. More fundamentally, it is recommended that the evaluation of policies and their effects should be based on their consequences for well-being. Given the substantial extent that well-being depends on much more than conventional measures of incomes and employment, the evaluation of different components of the skills policy agenda differs correspondingly.