Conventional wisdom holds that the emigration of highly skilled workers depletes local human capital developing countries.  But when the very prospect of emigration induces people to invest more in their education, the effects might not be so negative.  We analyze a unique natural quasi-experiment in the Republic of Fiji Islands, where political shocks have provoked one of the largest recorded expoduses of skilled workers from a developing country.  We use rich census and administrative microdata to show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji, but also raised the stock of tertiary-educated people in Fiji - net departures.

Michael Clemens is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where he leads the Migration and Development initiatiave.  His research focuses on the effects of international migration from and in developing countries.  Michael joined the Center after completing his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard.  His past writings have focused on the effects of foreign aid, determinants of capital flows and effects of tariff policy in the 19th century and the historical determinants of school system expansion.  Michael has served as a consultant for the World Bank, Bain & Co., the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Development Program.

This colloquium will feature presentations by two visiting scholars from China. First, Dr. Huijun Liu will present research on health risks associated with gender imbalance in China. The problems of abnormal sex ratio at birth and high female infant mortality have plagued many Asian countries with a strong male preference and gender inequality. In China, these problems having lasted for more than twenty years and contributed to a serious gender imbalance in the population. As a direct consequence, “surplus men” or “forced bachelors,” are expected to increase to more than 30 million. Dr. Liu will discuss the potential health risks and other social problems likely to be exacerbated by this large-scale gender imbalance in China.

Second, Dr. Dahai Zhao will present “How Is Health Insurance Coverage Utilized among Migrant Workers in Shanghai, China?” According to the regulations of the Chinese national and Shanghai municipal governments, migrant workers employed in Shanghai should all be entitled to the Shanghai Migrant Worker Hospitalization Insurance (SMWHI) without premium and the vast majority should also have coverage through the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS). Dr. Zhao will present results from research, conducted jointly with Dr. Wei Yu and Dr. Alan M. Garber, examining the status of the coverage and utilization of health insurance among migrant workers employed in Shanghai. Through their study, they found that a significant minority of migrant workers in Shanghai still had no health insurance, and that health insurance utilization among migrant workers was strongly limited by hospital location.

Huijun Liu is an associate professor in the Public Policy and Administration School at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. She received her PhD in management science and engineering from the Management School of Xi'an Jiaotong University. Her main areas of research focus on gender imbalance, reproductive health, vulnerability, and social support. Her current research focuses on how gender imbalance and migration amplify the risk of HIV transmission in China. Liu has published over twenty papers in Chinese academic journals, including China Soft Science, Population and Economics, Psychological Science Advance, Collection of Women's Studies, and Modern Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Zhao is an assistant professor with the School of Public Economics and Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), and a fellow with the Center for Health Policy at SUFE. He earned a master's degree in medicine in 2005 and a PhD in 2008, both from Fudan University, China.

Ethical consumerism has been around for a long time—during the revolution, many Americans protested against the Stamp Act of 1756 by refusing to buy tea and other Brit- ish goods. In recent years, ethical consumerism has become an increasingly prominent feature of social life, as new forms of technology have allowed consumers to use their choices in the marketplace to address various environmental, labor and trade concerns.

Surprisingly, relatively little attention has been paid to the moral issues raised by ethical consumerism. Suppose that consumers are morally permitted to use their buying power to pressure companies to treat animals better or to reduce carbon emissions. Does this mean that they can also pressure pharmacies not to stock the “morning after” pill? Can they pressure Wal-Mart not to sell books or music that they find offensive? Even in cases where consumers are pressuring companies to do the right thing, do their actions amount to a kind of vigilante justice?

Waheed Hussain is an assistant professor in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University and an A.B. in Philosophy from Princeton University. His main research interests lie in moral and political philosophy, particularly in those areas that bear on the morality of economic life.

One of his major research projects focuses on the philosophical debate about how best to understand the political concern for freedom. After formulating and defending an interpretation of this concern, he argues that the most attractive economic arrangements from the standpoint of freedom are those that extend democratic forms of decision making into economic life. An example of such an arrangement would be the codetermination system in Germany, which gives representatives of labor a significant role to play in economic decision making.

Other current projects include developing a more adequate understanding of the nature of personal autonomy and its significance in political contexts, examining the role of secondary associations in a capitalist democracy, formulating a moral contractualist account of the duties of corporations and their managers, and assessing the case for the corporation's right (and perhaps duty) to engage in civil disobedience.

At Wharton, Professor Hussain teaches Legal Studies 210, Corporate Responsibility and Ethics and Legal Studies 226, Markets, Morality and the Future of Capitalism, which is cross-listed in both the Philosophy Department at Penn and the Program in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.