Inputs from the New Economics of Migration of Medical Doctors in Eastern and Central Europe

Literature Review

Physician migration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Imbalances in the production of physicians lead to workforce shortages and surpluses. Many authors analyzed these imbalances. In the countries when health care needs are often greater than in developed countries the workforce shortage seriously compromise the ability to deliver adequate and equitable health care to a large proportion of population. In these countries the physician emigration could have important effects on donor countries.

Authors such as Commander, Kangasniemi and Winters (2003) emphasized that early models found that emigration of skilled labor would be harmful through the impact on wages, employment, and fiscal costs. They also showed that more recent literature has argued that a beneficial “brain gain” takes place under the effects of educational externalities. Marchiori, Ling, and Docquier (2010) suggest that the movement of high skilled human capital from developing to developed countries can have many positive effects. Brain drain improves human capital through ex-ante motivations to be highly educated, creates positive externality on total factor productivity by helping technology diffusion from the receiving countries, decreases information risks and triggers more foreign direct investment inflows (Marchiori et al., 2010).