Before Brain Drain: Italian Economists On The Calculus Of The Value Of Men

This study deals with the debate which took place among Italian economists and statisticians at the turn of the 20th century on the economic effects of mass emigration. In particular, it is focused on a controversy between Vilfredo Pareto, Alberto Beneduce on the one side, and Francesco Coletti on the other. It analyzes the way these scholars struggled with: (i) the problem of properly elaborating a specific cost-benefit analysis referred to emigration and (ii), as a consequence, the problem of recognizing a clear set of economic policies designed to manage the complex economic and social processes connected to emigration. The paper demonstrates the enduring character of the problems encountered in the early Italian debates, by showing that these questions are similar to those debated in the vast literature developed from the 1950s on the subject of brain drain, and suggests an explanation for the lack of conclusive results in this literature. We think that it is possible to understand this impasse by highlighting that in the analyzed literature a problem of ‘fallacy of composition’ emerges between the microeconomics and macroeconomics of emigration.