Irena Beqiraj
Albania ranks third for emigration and educated population in 2023-2024 compared to 38 countries in the EBRD Region. Bosnia and Palestine, countries that have been destabilized by wars, rank worse than Albania.
Data shows that over 23% of Albanian educated people emigrated in 2023-2024, only 2-3% of them returned. Albania has a very large difference between the “exit” and “input” of talents, one of the highest disparities among EBRD economies.
There is proud talk of economic growth, an increase in the average salary, and fiscal amnesty, but Albania is failing to be an attractive destination for international talent, while it is constantly losing local professionals to more developed countries.
Although we believe in the conventional reasoning that poverty is what drives emigration, experience and empirical studies show other motives.
To simplify the analysis, I will take an example! A bank clerk in Albania is paid 1000 Euros per month, while his colleague in Germany is paid around 5000 Euros per month.
Meanwhile, if the Albanian economist emigrates and works in a bank in Germany, his productivity increases overnight. Having said that, the advantage of the German economist is not individual. The answer must be sought in the economic environment. The German economist is fortunate to operate in an economy that has better technology, more productive firms, more developed economic sectors, better institutions and better infrastructure – achievements that are largely the products of collective actions undertaken over decades.
People will always try to migrate to economic environments where their productivity is higher when they can. Empirical studies show that as a country moves from a poor country to a country with a middle income per capita, both the opportunity and the incentive to migrate increase in the same direction.
And there is an explanation for this. The transition from a poor country to a country with a higher per capita middle income is closely linked to increased individual investment in education. Increased skills encourage and facilitate migration.
Similarly, barriers to emigration from destination countries tend to ease as migrants' countries of origin move from poor to middle-income countries. The graph clearly shows that the ability to emigrate and the incentive to emigrate move in opposite directions in developed countries, that is, as the country moves to a country with high per capita income.
The longer a country remains in the middle-income per capita stage (Albania entered this stage in 2018), the greater the incentive for educated people who have the opportunity to increase their productivity overnight in rich countries to emigrate.
For any economist who studies development, the bad news is not that Albania currently has the highest emigration of educated people after countries destabilized by war, but the fact that there is no sign of a change in the policies that promote development, i.e. the sources of growth.
The desertification of Albania, blessed by beautiful nature, climate, and natural resources, but cursed by lazy and visionless policymakers, will continue.
Relying on tourism and the construction of Five Star hotels is the sure path to a Hawaiian economy, or a service economy with low productivity (cleaners and waiters). As a result of low productivity, economic growth translates into economic inequality and high costs of living.
So to put it simply, Vlora residents will continue to buy basic consumer goods from rich countries, while cleaning the toilets and rooms of resorts brokered by Ivanka Trump. Under these conditions, an economist, an engineer, a programmer, a researcher, a doctor will continue to have very low productivity in Vlora.
The total lack of productivity growth policies; the second wave of deindustrialization that domestic production is going through; the fact that the largest firms produce almost "nothing" and we parasitize on state funds and budget; the lack of competition; endemic corruption, are factors that will not enable us to transition to a high-income country for an indefinite period of time.
That said, the stagnation at the country's middle-income per capita stage will increasingly push Albanians to emigrate and seek more favorable economic environments where, with the same skills, they can be several times more productive.
Editorial
