TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Chand, Satish
AU  - Clemens, Michael A.
        TI  - Human Capital Investment under Exit Options: Evidence from a Natural Quasi-Experiment
        PY  - 2019/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 12173
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp12173
        AB  - Theory suggests that groups historically subject to discrimination, such as Jews, could exhibit traditionally high investment in education because discrimination spurred exit facilitated by human capital. Theory moreover suggests that if exit is uncertain, it could induce investment in skill that more-than-offsets the mechanical reduction in skill stocks at the origin. Tests of such theories are difficult and few. We examine a unique natural quasiexperiment in the Republic of Fiji, in which a sharp increase in discrimination induced mass exit by one ethnic group and mass skill investment by the same group. We show that the induced investment more than offset the loss from exit, producing a net increase in skill stocks. We argue with theory and a range of nonexperimental falsification tests that exit by skilled workers was a necessary causal mechanism of the offsetting skill investment. 
        KW  - brain drain
KW  - migration
KW  - immigration
KW  - emigration
KW  - skill
KW  - student
KW  - tertiary
KW  - postsecondary
KW  - college
KW  - university
KW  - training
KW  - human capital
KW  - education
KW  - Jewish
KW  - Asian
KW  - ethnic
KW  - discrimination
KW  - schooling
KW  - selection
KW  - commonwealth
KW  - Australia
KW  - New Zealand
KW  - Canada
KW  - Pacific
KW  - brain gain
KW  - natural experiment
KW  - Fiji
        ER  -