Quotes from Paul Collier

One way of grounding how we should identify refugees in a changing world is through the concept of force majeure - the absence of a reasonable choice but to leave.

Six man variables... determine variation in refugees' income levels. First, regulation: the greater the degree of full participation in the national economy, the better refugees will do... Second, nationality... Third, education... fourth, occupation... fifth, gender... sixth, networks

miracles. My generation grew up through such a period, between

In September 2001, after an unnecessary international war with Ethiopia, half the Eritrean cabinet wrote to the president, Isaias Afwerki, asking him to think again about his autocratic style of government. He thought about it and imprisoned them all.

If state tries to impose a set of values different from those of its citizens it forfeits trust and its authority erodes.

Es natural que un gobierno de un país en situación de posguerra trate de defenderse, pero no le servirá de nada.

single-issue pressure groups driven by 'activists' have replaced pragmatic coalitions, while 'activism' has come to mean 'drawing attention' – ostensibly to the chosen issue, but in practice, perhaps most especially to oneself: 'I care about this.

podemos decir que los "chulos bancarios" son tan despreciables como los proxenetas comunes.

People were asked to recall and rank those past decisions that they most regret.

The regrets that fester are overwhelmingly about failures to meet 'oughts', when we have let someone down, breaching an obligation.5 We learn from such regrets to keep our obligations. Although our decisions are biased towards momentary folly, when we consider our actions 'oughts' usually trump wants.

There is no analytic presumption that migration produces gains either for the societies that migrants join, or for those they leave; the only unambiguous gains are for the migrants themselves.

Entre eso y las amenazas de muerte que recibió, la nueva ministra supo que iba por buen camino.

What is true of asset managers is true of lawyers. Willem Buiter, former Chief Economist for Citigroup, puts it aptly: the first third of lawyers produce the immense social value we know as the 'rule of law'. The next third are working on legal disputes that are essentially zero-sum games: each side over-invests in winning the tournament and so they are socially useless....The final third of lawyers are socially predatory: they are employed in the legal scams that fleece the productive.

Ni la búsqueda de justicia con ánimo vengativo por parte de los vencedores ni el olvido por decreto son actitudes deseables.

es imposible que los dos estén en lo cierto. Sí es posible, en cambio, que los dos estén en un error

Very recently, economists have gained a better understanding of the structure of taboos. Their purpose is to protect a sense of identity by shielding people from evidence that might challenge it.2 Taboos save you from the need to cover your ears by constraining what is said.

A refusal to countenance racially based differences in behavior is a manifestation of human decency. A refusal to countenance culturally based differences in behavior would be a manifestation of blinkered denial of the obvious.

But in virtually all societies with more inclusive voting systems, single-issue anti-immigrant parties now attract a remarkably high share of the vote. Far from forcing sane debate on immigration policy by the mainstream parties, the emergence of extremists has further frightened them away from the issue. Either you regard this outcome as a shocking condemnation of ordinary people, or as a shocking condemnation of the mainstream political parties: I view it as the latter.

By eschewing shared belonging, and the benign patriotism that it can support, liberals have abandoned the only force capable of uniting our societies behind remedies. Inadvertently, recklessly, they have handed it to the charlatan extremes, which are gleefully twisting it to their own warped purposes.

Whether or not migrants realize it, the impetus for their emigration is to escape from those aspects of their countries of origin that have condemned people to low productivity.

The left needs to move on from the West's self-flagellation and idealized notions of developing countries. Poverty is not romantic. The countries of the bottom billion are not there to pioneer experiments in socialism; they need to be helped along the already trodden path of building market economies.

The radical opposition came from the provinces. The mutinies were age-related, but they were not as simple as old-versus-young. Both older workers, who had been marginalized as their skills lost value, and young people, entering a bleak job market, turned to the extremes.

the Arab Spring, which has transformed Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and, as I write, shortly Syria. These transformations each demonstrate the potency of the idea of democratic institutions.

Many of the characteristics that are responsible for successful families are not just good for the families themselves, but good for the entire society. Conversely, many of those that are responsible for failing families are not only private tragedies, but social catastrophes.