Scientific Brain Drain& Return

Developing countries are rapidly losing their human capital because of growing immigration. Besides being members of a highly mobile community, scientists and academics are a large portion of the highly skilled labor of an economy, and they are also the cultivators of it. The immigration of scientists constitutes an important loss for the home country’s scientific environment and its economy. However, the developing world could benefit from it under some circumstances, such as reverse brain drain which is this book’s main focus. This book aims to present the output of my post-doctoral research on the reverse brain drain of the Turkish Scientists residing in the USA and American scientists’ scientific interests in Turkey. It is also one of the book’s intent to provide policy proposals for immigration and the return of highly skilled labor. It was an outstanding experience to conduct research while being able to observe the research subjects in a scientifically influential area. It was a year-long process at Harvard to finalize the research and draw up the final report for TÜBİTAK in 2017. This research is funded by TÜBİTAK 2219 International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program. The book is a revised and extended version of the final report. I would like to thank TÜBİTAK, Richard B. Freeman, Harvard, and NBER for making this research possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Nil Demet Gungor for allowing me to use some parts of the Gungor (2003) questionnaire. Nearly 700 online surveys were conducted and 30 Turkish scientists residing in the USA were interviewed face to face which excessively helped to structure the questionnaire. All data collecting processes were approved by Harvard IRB.