Don't read much into Banerjee-Duflo flight

The relocation of Nobel Prize-winning couple Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo from the US to Switzerland amid the Trump administration's assaults on academic freedom and research funding will trigger angst over brain drain. These fears may be overblown. The economics Nobel laureates would have personal reasons for making the move. Their work is in development economics where the subject of study is poor nations. Such a line of enquiry can be conducted equally well from Boston and Zurich. Social science provides a dynamic area of research as economies move at varying speeds towards affluence. The process of understanding this change is based on real-life experience and must be collaborative.

Doomsayers would have a more plausible cause for alarm if the US academia were to begin losing their best brains in natural sciences, where research output provides tangible and immediate gains to the host economy. The US has consistently ranked among the top global talents since the middle of the 20th century, developing its military and economic might. The process is driven by US business, which acts as the principal client for the research flowing out of universities. Other nations lost out because they didn't have enough business funding for research. They couldn't match budgets of US universities.

Well, that issue is even more magnified now. American companies dwarf European and Asian rivals by a wider margin today. It would be easy for US Inc to fund research around the globe if talent stays at home. Besides, companies like Google have an enviable number of Nobel Prize winners on their rolls. Few companies anywhere in the world would have business interests of a scale to be able to justify cornering so much talent. It would take a very long time for the US to lose its critical mass in research. Secondary centres may gain some traction through reverse brain drain but no country is poised to seriously challenge US research hegemony.