## GLOBAL TALENT AND ECONOMIC SUCCESS

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**Canonical URL:** [GLOBAL TALENT AND ECONOMIC SUCCESS](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/03/kerr.pdf)

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### Overview
- Countries that attract the world’s most talented people will be the most successful at overcoming mounting economic pressures from aging populations and declining productivity.
- Global talent flows are characterized as a “gift” in the author’s book; they will not end, but policymakers will need new frameworks.
- Public support for immigration has declined recently in many advanced economies, yet declines are often from historically high levels and support for employment- or economic-focused migration remains broad.

### Talent facts and the geography of innovation
- Exceptionally talented people migrate at higher rates than the general population:
  - 5.4 percent of workers with a college education live outside their home countries, compared with 1.8 percent of high school graduates.
  - Inventors migrate at twice the college-educated-worker rate.
  - Nobel Prize winners migrate at six times the college-educated-worker rate.
- Knowledge-based work and the geography of innovation have concentrated in leading clusters:
  - Six tech centers tripled their share of patents from 11.3 percent during 1975–79 to 34.2 percent for 2015–19 (out of more than 300 metropolitan areas).
- Global talent plays a central role in developing and reinforcing these clusters; incoming talent strengthens cluster value and attracts further arrivals.

### Points of vulnerability and political economy
- Discontent can emerge within talent clusters over housing, schools, and hospitals; migrants are often blamed although root causes (for example, strict regulations that stifle new construction) frequently predate arrivals.
- Tension exists between populations outside talent clusters and those within; distrust of highly educated “elite” can translate into skepticism toward the “foreign elite.”
- Business advocacy for employment-based migration reflects capacity to employ and expand production but may clash with local resource constraints.
- Policy uncertainty deters long-term investments by potential migrants and employers; stable policy foundations are essential for attracting top talent.

### Policy considerations for attracting global talent
- Education pathway alignment:
  - Employment-based migration is intricately connected to schooling decisions; work visas often hire young talent coming out of university.
  - Policymakers need to ensure school visas, work visas, permanent residencies, and related elements of the immigration pipeline are well balanced.
- Complementarity with local investment:
  - Pursuing global talent complements investment in local schools, infrastructure, and public goods; immigrant-created businesses draw upon the native workforce.
- Reduce policy uncertainty:
  - Stable, user-friendly systems assure migrants that investments will be recognized and rewarded.
- Design flexibility into immigration policy:
  - Examples of flexibility include automatic adjustments to visa caps based on easily indexed data, like population growth.
  - Some countries (for example, Canada) can “immigrant engineer” by experimenting and recalibrating policies; others (for example, the US) make large-scale changes only infrequently.
- Allocate scarce immigration slots effectively:
  - Many systems use lotteries or first-come-first-served procedures that don’t prioritize truly rare skills; selection procedures should be reviewed to maximize economic impact.
- Political management of geographic distribution:
  - Policies like “heartland visas” aim to distribute global talent more evenly (placing talent in rural areas may not yield the same productivity boost as top clusters but can broaden political support and share benefits more widely).
- Gender considerations:
  - By 2010, the stock of female high-skilled migrants in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries had surpassed the male stock.
  - Female enrollments in colleges and universities continue to outpace male enrollments; policymakers should consider the features women value in destinations.

### Welfare of sending countries and broader observations
- Sending-country outcomes vary: some lose out (“brain drain”) while others gain (“brain gain”), depending on networks and engagement between receiving-country businesses and migrants’ home countries.
- A strong benefit for sending countries may come via greater schooling of young people who hope to migrate, because many ultimately do not migrate.
- Access to global talent sets an upper bound on how far a country can set its aspirations for advanced technologies and related national strategies.

*William Kerr, “GLOBAL TALENT AND ECONOMIC SUCCESS,” F&D, March 2025.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/03/kerr.pdf_