TY  - JOUR
AU  - McAusland,Carol
AU  - Kuhn,Peter J.
TI  - Bidding for Brains: Intellectual Property Rights and the International Migration of Knowledge Workers
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15486
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15486
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15486.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Carol McAusland
Food and Resource Economics
337-2357 Main Mall
University of British Columbia
Vancouver BC
Canada V6T 1Z4
E-Mail: carol.mcausland@ubc.ca

Peter J. Kuhn
Department of Economics
University of California, Santa Barbara
2127 North Hall
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
Tel: 805/893-3666
Fax: 805/893-8830
E-Mail: pjkuhn@econ.ucsb.edu
AB  - We introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of Nash equilibrium IPR policy choice among countries. We show that governments have incentives to use IPRs in a bidding war for global talent, resulting in Nash equilibrium IPRs that can be too high, rather than too low, from a global welfare perspective. These incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth, thus allowing them to prevent the 'poaching' of their 'brains' by larger, wealthier markets.
ER  -