Sports: A Highway to Brain Drain? [Hybrid Poster 2-A]
Grade Level at Time of Presentation
Senior
Major
Economics
Minor
Finance
Institution
Murray State University
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
Dr. David Eaton
Department
Economics
Abstract
Brain drain is formally defined as the, “emigration of educated or talented individuals” (Investopedia, 2017), usually from rural to urban areas or developing countries to developed countries. Admittedly, the brain drain effect have drawn substantial amounts of attention over the past few years; in spite of this, no work has predominantly focus on how sports affects brain drain. As a result, this prompted me to focus my paper on the facilitation of the brain drain effect by athletes from developing countries. The facilitation of the brain drain effect by athletes can potentially lead to two major highways— first, sports can be used as an outlet to bypass government policies on preventing the brain drain effect; second, sports can be used as a doorway to brain drain.
Coming from a developing country, Belize, we have witnessed countless athletes, going abroad to study but never actually return to Belize; so, this a good opportunity to dissect and interconnect these factors and present the findings. In regards to expected findings, we expect to find that brain drain is indeed facilitated by sports via athletes from developing countries to developed countries, more specifically in Europe, since these players might not actually possess the required skillset or even be exposed enough to make it to the NBA or major leagues in soccer such as La Liga in Spain and the English Premiere League. The first step to constructing a data set is to find data from the NCAA, NAIA and mid-level soccer leagues to access data on players from developing countries. Moving on, brain drain is an ongoing challenge faced in developing countries and should be accordingly researched as such!
Sports: A Highway to Brain Drain? [Hybrid Poster 2-A]
Brain drain is formally defined as the, “emigration of educated or talented individuals” (Investopedia, 2017), usually from rural to urban areas or developing countries to developed countries. Admittedly, the brain drain effect have drawn substantial amounts of attention over the past few years; in spite of this, no work has predominantly focus on how sports affects brain drain. As a result, this prompted me to focus my paper on the facilitation of the brain drain effect by athletes from developing countries. The facilitation of the brain drain effect by athletes can potentially lead to two major highways— first, sports can be used as an outlet to bypass government policies on preventing the brain drain effect; second, sports can be used as a doorway to brain drain.
Coming from a developing country, Belize, we have witnessed countless athletes, going abroad to study but never actually return to Belize; so, this a good opportunity to dissect and interconnect these factors and present the findings. In regards to expected findings, we expect to find that brain drain is indeed facilitated by sports via athletes from developing countries to developed countries, more specifically in Europe, since these players might not actually possess the required skillset or even be exposed enough to make it to the NBA or major leagues in soccer such as La Liga in Spain and the English Premiere League. The first step to constructing a data set is to find data from the NCAA, NAIA and mid-level soccer leagues to access data on players from developing countries. Moving on, brain drain is an ongoing challenge faced in developing countries and should be accordingly researched as such!