Three in ten Nobel laureates were immigrants. That’s just one example of the vital – and often overlooked – role that migrants play in creating new ideas that make us all better off and in disseminating innovative practices through their entrepreneurial activity. Middle Eastern immigrants, many of whom were targeted by President Trump’s (suspended) travel ban, play an outsized role in US innovation, according to new research by Sami Mahroum summarised …
Continue readingHow far might the backlash against openness go?
Hi How far might the backlash against openness go? It’s often argued that in a digital age, globalisation is a technological inevitability, and thus irreversible. But in practice, even the internet can be segmented behind national walls: just look at the Great Firewall of China. The world is anything but flat. And that’s just one of the many ways in which the simplistic belief that globalisation is technologically determined is false, as …
Continue readingWhy the French elections matter, plus skilled immigration
Hi French people vote tomorrow in the first round of presidential elections that could do grave harm to Europe’s open societies – or strengthen them. With polls too close to call, four candidates stand a chance of making it into the run-off on May 7th. The far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is ostensibly open towards refugees. But despite his internationalist talk, he is essentially a nationalist, argues Natalie Nougayrède in the Guardian. He is a …
Continue readingOpen Up quoted in Project Syndicate
To be sure, the European Commission promised to create a single digital market two years ago, estimating that it could boost the EU economy by €415 billion ($448.5 billion) annually. But Hosuk Lee-Makiyama and Philippe Legrain of the Open Political Economy Network recently delivered a scathing assessment of the results. Europe’s “single digital market,” they argue, currently amounts “to a jumble of outdated, corporatist, counterproductive industrial policies that favor producers over consumers, …
Continue readingHow do we shift negative attitudes towards immigration?
Hi OPEN’s mission is to defend and advance open liberal societies and these recent pieces particularly caught our attention. How do we shift negative attitudes towards immigration? Faced with populists who appeal to fear and hate, presenting facts can seem hopelessly technocratic. But facts can make a difference, as new research highlighted in a brilliant post by Sam Bowman makes clear. “People almost always overestimate the proportion of their country’s population that …
Continue readingEssential weekend reading
OPEN’s mission is to defend and advance open liberal societies and these recent pieces particularly caught our attention. Reams of articles have been written this week about the letter that Theresa May sent to Donald Tusk officially notifying the EU of the UK’s intention to leave. As the two-year countdown to Brexit began, Chris Patten wrote a particularly thoughtful and perceptive piece for Project Syndicate about how Britain got here …
Continue readingRefugees Work quoted in the Hindu
Refugees are a major source of (low-cost) employment and other commercial opportunities. In May last year, the Tent Foundation and Open Political Economy Network brought out what they called the first comprehensive, international study of how refugees can contribute to advanced economies. In the report, Refugees Work: A Humanitarian Investment That Yields Economic Dividends, the organisation used data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ascertain the economic impact of asylum …
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Protecting competition, or competitors?
— Europe’s pursuit of Silicon Valley
It’s getting harder to escape the suspicion that the EU is sometimes acting in the interest of European firms who struggle to compete with a new breed of rivals like Apple, Amazon and Google. President Obama has said that the recent scrutiny by the EU competition authorities of US tech firms was driven by “commercial interests”. But the suspicions of Brussels using competition policy for protectionism are hardly anything new. In …
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OPEN aims to tap the insights of a diverse network of thinkers and experts – and our blog is a place for short, topical pieces on the subjects OPEN is working on. So please get in touch if you have something interesting to contribute. Thanks!
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