Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether universities' research quality is significantly associated with university student mobility across Italian provinces. We analyze first university enrollments of students in 2010 and 2011, and relate them to several research quality indicators computed from large databases (such as ISIThompson and Google Scholar) and official administrative sources (Five-year Research Evaluation) using a gravity model. Our estimates show that promoting research quality may be an important means to attenuate the brain-drain or alternatively promote brain-gain. According to our estimates increasing the number of Google-Scholar publications per researcher by 1% in a province, for instance, would produce a 0.33% decrease in the number of local students enrolling in other provinces.