Hello and welcome.

My name is Sophia Bash and you're listening to the CER podcast.

Hello and welcome to the fifth and final episode of the CER podcast series on the Economics of Populism.

Today I'm in conversation with Martin Sanbuh and Christian Dostman.

Martin Sanbu writes the Financial Times, Free Lunch Daily newsletter on the global economics debate,

and Christian Dustman is Professor of Economics at University College London and Director of the

Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. Now, the topic of this episode is how should

governments respond to migration fears?, the topic of this episode is how should governments respond to migration

fears?

Because the evidence is so strong that immigration is, on the whole, strongly economically

positive for the recipient country. And pretty much for all parts of the wage distribution

may be mixed at the bottom, but in any case,

not very negative. That's actually good news. It means that things can be done to make even those

who fear immigration better off from immigration. And I think that's where policy has to focus. There has to be

demonstrable effects on the places and areas that are most skeptical of that immigration

of the positive economic effects that immigration brings. So that means making very visible

links between how a place fares and migration into it and into the country generally. And there could be, for example, in terms of explicit provision for extra public services or other things. But policies that quite directly and explicitly link immigration to a positive economic boost.

Should governments be doing this at all? Should they respond to fears towards migration

if the evidence is scarce that these fears are justified? Or are governments by responding through economic policies really

legitimizing the fears in the first place?

Of course, they have to.

Concerns people have about migration, whether they are based on economic facts or not, are

...