The International Intelligence Outflow’s Influence On Mother Countries’ Technological Innovation

Economic globalization accelerated the exchange of human talents all over the world.At the same time, more and more experienced labor force flow to developed countries fromdeveloping countries. The initial international intelligence outflow is that a large number ofBritish scientists and scholars migrated to the United States, and later it refers to thetransnational mobility of human capital, which means experienced labor force’s flow frommother country to other countries such as senior technicians, scientists and engineers.The early theoretical research considered that brain drain brought negative influence tothe sending countries based on the static short-term perspective. Since the1980’s, a newphenomenon of overseas talents backflow appeared when the intelligence outflow isincreasing in. Based on a long-term dynamic perspective, scholars put more attention onIntelligence outflow’s positive impact on mother countries’ human capital levels. Furtherstudies show that considering the time lag of feedback effect, international intelligenceoutflow can bring positive effect on mother countries’ human capital levels through manychannels which may even make intelligence outflow’s negative effect reversed.Based on the model of technological innovation input and output，we use the penal databetween1998-2011of34developing countries, and analyzed the effect of developingcountries’ intelligence outflow on mother countries’ technological innovation. The empiricalresults show that international intelligence outflow can impede mother countries’ innovationby reducing human capital stock level, but in the long run, it can accelerate mother countries’innovation by education incentive effect, remittance effect and network effect. Then weconduct empirical test on some factors which influence intelligence outflow-innovationeffect and their threshold characteristics. We calculate the threshold level which influenceintelligence outflow-innovation effect from4aspects such as mother countries’ economicdevelopment level, R&D input level, human capital level and technological gap.