Philippe Legrain

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

“The notion that migration is a one-way movement of permanent settlement is outdated.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 [...]

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 [...]

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

The Guardian, 4 January 2011. Taxes on financial transactions, carbon and land could fill the hole in the public finances

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]

“Los casi 100.000 millones que se piden a la eurozona no son una ayuda, sino un préstamo que habrá que devolver con altos tipos de interés. La factura sale a unos 23.000 euros por irlandés: los ciudadanos tendrán que pagar mucho dinero para salvar a sus bancos y por la pésima gestión del Gobierno”, advirtió [...]

This is a slightly longer version of an article that appeared in the FT. Euro-phobes can scarcely contain their joy at the Irish crisis – proof positive, in their eyes, of the folly of the single currency. But while the euro-zone certainly needs reform, the notion that the euro is to blame for Ireland’s travails [...]

I spent a fantastic weekend in Kilkenny, at Kilkenomics, Ireland’s first economics (and comedy) festival. Despite (and because of) the crisis, it was a sell-out. Congrats to Richard Cook and David McWilliams for putting on a superb event, hopefully the first of many. The Irish government now appears to be in talks with the EU [...]