Free Minds: Michael Clemens, a global thinker in a world filled with narrow-minded nationalism

 Yet his key work has been on migration – arguably the biggest issue of our age. And the reason his studies are so important is simple: Clemens is the first key thinker to focus hard on people rather than places when it comes to immigration. So instead of just examining if rich and poor nations benefit or lose from movement of individuals, he looks at the impact on those uprooting their lives to move across borders. “Labour mobility does more to extend opportunity and prosperity to poor people in some settings than anything else we have thought of,” he argues. “And can do a lot more if we chose to unleash its power.”

He calls this “the place premium” – the fact that your lifestyle, value and worth depends not on education, endeavours, skills and talent but largely on the chances of where you live. This may seem obvious. Yet the differentials raise profound moral and social questions. Why, for instance, should a low-skilled worker in Cambodia earn six times less than a low-skilled worker who happened to be born in California? Or a Moldovan nurse take home ten times less than one from Manchester? And what does it mean for humanity when one quarter of those Haitians who have escaped the poverty trap live in the United States?

Clemens was one of the few people in the development world to emerge from the 2010 Haiti earthquake fiasco with their reputation enhanced. Armed with his data, the economist led a successful campaign in the United States to get Haitians made eligible for low-skill temporary work visas. His argument was simple and correct: that the economic impact of migration, combined with remittances sent home, would be far more help to the shattered nation than the massive (and appallingly inept) foreign aid effort.

The Utah-raised academic, who has worked in Brazil, Colombia and Turkey, points out that one simple policy could make the world twice as rich: open borders. His 2011 paper on the subject was called Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk.  He argues that potential benefits dwarf more popular ideas such as free trade and foreign aid, with even modest relaxation of barriers to human mobility bringing about more prosperity than elimination of all remaining legal barriers to movement in goods and capital.

This is challenging stuff, especially in the current political climate. Like any decent thinker, this modest man manages to provoke both sides of political debate. So the Right dislike his data showing that Haitian farmworkers on those temporary visas in Alabama added $4,000 to the United States economy per worker, per month. And the Left dislike his demolition of the idea of the brain drain, such as when he showed the immorality and ineffectiveness of policies designed to stop Britain’s national health service from hiring foreign medical staff.

Clemens prompts us to consider big questions too readily taken for granted about the lottery of life. But he also offers solutions: his “global skills partnerships” idea – suggesting rich countries with labour shortages might set up training centres in poorer nations with excess labour to benefit both sides – offers sense for a Europe that sits beside Africa with its population explosion. He provides an essential voice in a world infused with narrow-minded nationalism, offering evidence and humane suggestions whether we listen or not.