Plurilingualism and Brain Drain: Unexpected Consequences of Access to Foreign TV

We study how foreign language proficiency affects brain drain by exploiting the heterogenous exposure of Albania to Italian television in the second half of the twentieth century. We document that, due to geographical proximity, the Italian TV signal accidentally reached Albania and, conditional on geographic conditions, Albanians’ exposure to the signal was as good as random. We find that exposure to Italian TV led to a considerable increase in Italian proficiency rates and strongly increased the probability of migrating of highly skilled individuals while not affecting other
skill groups. We rule out other channels through which TV might affect migration and interpret our findings as the effect of foreign language proficiency on brain drain.