Philippe Legrain

Read my article, translated into German, in die Berliner Republik.

Read my latest article for Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN.com

Lee el artículo en español

Read my immigration article for CNN.

Austerity alone cannot solve Europe’s economic and financial crisis. Growth and jobs need to be promoted with equal zeal.

My new article for Project Syndicate explains how.

I debated the fiasco at the summit of EU leaders on 8-9 December on BBC Radio 4′s The World Tonight with Angela Knight, former Conservative minister and now lobbyist for the British Banking Association. Listen here

Read my new article for Project Syndicate

“The notion that migration is a one-way movement of permanent settlement is outdated. Most of it is temporary—and it’s time the debate about immigration recognised this reality,” argues Philippe Legrain, an analyst of immigration and the author of “Aftershock”, a recent book analysing economic changes in the wake of the financial crash. Read the full article here.

No. I won the debate against David Goodhart on The Economist’s website, by 51%-49%. Thank you to everyone who voted No.

Headlines from a poll this week suggested nearly half of British people think there are too many immigrants in the UK.

But the findings change when people are presented with the facts.

The average respondent thought 3 in 10 people in the UK are foreign-born.

When told it’s actually 1 in 10, more than twothirds thought this was either “not many” (36%) or “a lot but not too many” (31%). Just 30% thought it was “too many”.

Read my column for EuroIntelligence

The debate in the UK about whether to tax bank bonuses (Labour) or balance-sheets (Conservative) is a sideshow.

Both are stopgap measures.

The key issue is that banks need to be broken up on competition grounds so they don’t earn huge profits in the first place.

Read my article in The Guardian

I was interviewed on BBC World’s World News Today on 1 December 2010 about whether the EU’s border policy is working, whether Europe really can control its borders, and whether there might be a better approach to immigration instead.

Pat Kenny interviewed me on RTE1′s The Frontline on 29 December 2010 about the EU/IMF “bailout” and Ireland’s banking and debt crisis.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I was interviewed on the BBC World Service’s Business Daily programme about Ireland, the euro and Europe’s banking and sovereign debt crisis. You can listen to the interview here.

In The Times‘ Christmas review of books about money, Oliver Kamm writes:

The Times recommends Aftershock: “The crash of 2007-09 did not turn into a reprise of the 1930s mainly because policymakers had learnt from the mistakes of that era. They rescued the banks, slashed interest rates, and injected money into the economy to support demand. Philippe Legrain, in Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy After the Crisis (Little, Brown, £12.99), lucidly discusses the policies that have (so far) prevented disaster and the route back to prosperity. Legrain knows his subject and is a commendably clear exponent of economic concepts. He argues, in my view incontrovertibly, that openness to trade and immigration has big welfare benefits.

Thank you.

I was interviewed on BBC World News on 25 November 2010 by George Alagiah about the euro-zone crisis and whether Portugal and Spain might be affected next.

I was interviewed by Peter Allen on 5 Live Drive on 23 November, following the government’s announcement of the details of its cap on highly skilled foreign workers.

The recording isn’t great and I sound a bit breathless because I was on my mobile phone at the airport, rushing to catch a plane.

Listen to it here

The UK government yesterday announced much tighter restrictions on people from outside the EU who want to come here to work or study.

At at time when the government is relying on the private sector to drive the recovery as the public sector is cut back, and when the education sector is a particularly important export earner, the government is shooting itself in the foot.

Despite all the talk about Britain being “open for business”, it will become a more closed economy and society.

The new measures also betray a nasty double standard.

David Cameron spent a gap year working for Jardine’s in Hong Kong.

Nick Clegg worked as a ski instructor in Austria (before that country joined the EU in 1995).

Jeremy Hunt spent 2 years in Japan teaching English and learning Japanese.

I doubt someone from outside the EU could now do the equivalent in the UK.

In effect, what ministers are saying is that it’s fine for Brits to spend a year abroad working or studying, but outrageous if foreigners want do the same in the UK.

That’s shameful and wrong.