Evolvement of international mobility of talents: a complex network perspective

Purpose Talents are the critical resource of sustainable development for countries, and attracting talents all over the world is the important way for increasing the country's talent reverse. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to make the governments understand the evolving pattern of international talent mobility. Design/methodology/approach This paper constructs the networked model of talent mobility among 15 major countries during the years 1990–2012 under the database of the Patent Cooperation Treaty and analyzes the global characteristics and the evolvement of international mobility of talents under complex network perspective. Findings It is found that the mobility network is scale-free, which means that a few developed countries, such as the USA, England and France, have enjoyed considerable migratory flows of talents, but most of the other countries only have moderate levels of brain circulation. Besides a very few exceptions, a dynamic equilibrium is reached for most countries, with numbers of talents evening out between emigration and immigration. As time passes by, the volume of talent flows is gradually stabilized, with the numerical gap existing between developed countries and developing ones. Nowadays, the scale of international mobility of talents is growing at an unprecedented speed, facilitated by technological progress and more flexible migratory policies. Originality/value This paper sheds light on the evolving pattern of the international talent mobility using complex network analysis. The cogent quantitative analysis highlights the huge challenges faced by national governments and provides the basis for deliberative policy-making aimed at winning the brain war internationally.