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.
