![]() Second, potential receiving countries may consider adopting specific policies to attract and welcome talented émigrés. First, analysts of the war itself can use robust estimates of Russian brain drain to better understand the resilience of the Russian economy, given that high skilled workers are an essential part of a modern economy. Ī “meaningful measurement” of such migration would provide important insights into long-run effects of the war on the Russian and Belarusian economies that would be of interest for researchers and policymakers. The Russian state, estimating that up to 10% of IT specialists had left by December 2022, has passed laws offering IT workers and firms tax breaks and benefits to entice them to stay. Anecdotes and predictions of local professional organizations suggest that many skilled individuals plan to or have already left these countries in response to the war, be it because of the effects of economic sanctions, fear of conscription, or moral opposition to the conflict. While the flight of millions of Ukrainians is well-documented, less is known about emigration out of Russia and its supporting ally Belarus. One such crisis is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, less is known about the dynamics of high skilled emigration and mobility during crises. In recent years digital trace data has been used to provide insights into a variety of social, political, and economic phenomena, including migration. Lack of data on high-skilled emigration also hinders our understanding of differences between those who leave and those who stay. In these cases the sending country is less likely to benefit from positive externalities of its diaspora.Īt the same time it is often difficult, especially in volatile situations, to estimate how many people are leaving a country and what their destinations are. Push factors like war, political instability, and terrorism cause shocks of emigration that are often irreversible. Whether skilled emigration is on net good or bad for sending countries highly depends on the push and pull factors at play in specific cases. These effects can be both negative, for instance if the country cannot replace essential workers, or positive, for instance when leavers build social and economic networks between their origins and destinations. The emigration of skilled individuals, sometimes called brain drain, is known to have important economic consequences for sending countries. In some receiving countries the number of arrivals is significant: I estimate an increase in the number of local software developers of 42% in Armenia, 60% in Cyprus and 94% in Georgia. This suggests that many of the most important developers have already left Russia. Developers leaving Russia were significantly more active and central in the collaboration network than those who remain. 13.2% of Russian developers have obscured their location (vs. By November 11.1% of Russian developers list a new country, compared with 2.8% of developers from comparable countries in the region but not directly involved in the conflict. Revisiting those developers that had been located in Russia in 2021, I confirm an ongoing exodus of developers from Russia in snapshots taken in June and November 2022. To address this gap, I draw on and extend a large scale dataset of the locations of highly active software developers collected in February 2021, one year before the invasion. This hinders our ability to understand its drivers and to anticipate its consequences. Yet quantifying brain drain, especially during crisis situations is generally difficult. In particular the exodus of skilled human capital, sometimes called brain drain, out of Russia may have a significant effect on the course of the war and the Russian economy in the long run. Besides those fleeing direct conflict in Ukraine, many individuals in Russia are also thought to have moved to third countries. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused large scale destruction, significant loss of life, and the displacement of millions of people.
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