Improving knowledge, talent and competitiveness: which best practice for the brain drain?

This paper is divided into three parts aiming to understand what should be the most useful contents of policies for contemporary highly skilled migrations.
So, we will firstly provide a short overview of the methods proposed by several Authors in order to describe the main characteristics and trends of international brain drain. Then, in the second part we will show an overview of strategies adopted so far by the governments of those countries that, according to the demographic and economic literature, are the most involved in the brain drain phenomenon. As this kind of analysis does not allow to capture some problematic aspects of the actual world economic system, the discussion will be enriched by the analysis on how changing demographic, economic and social scenarios within the different countries may affect causes and dynamics of highly skilled migration. The most recent data published by the United Nations within the World Population Prospects and data from the analysis of the World Economic Forum (2011 and 2012) will be used as main sources.