Max Gallien

Can we extract the Reform nonsense from Labour? These immigration proposals are obscene, but the government can be forced to think again.

The government's immigration proposals are an obscenity: They needlessly punish refugees, make integration basically impossible, and introduce a sliding system of administrative abuse depending on how wealthy you are iandunt.substack.com/p/can-we-ext...

The paper is from an ongoing @ictdtax.bsky.social project with Umair Javed and Vanessa van den Boogaard, hopefully more to come in the coming months - watch this space!

Every #Ramadan, the people of #Pakistan give over 600 billion rupees in #zakat - more than any state social welfare program. And, as our recent study found, the majority of that goes to women - a good reminder in these days of what people can do.
Full working paper here:
www.ictd.ac/publication/...

Zakat as Non-State Social Welfare Provision: Distributional Dynamics and Gender Equity in Pakistan - ICTD We examine the distributional dynamics of zakat in Pakistan to help understand non-state welfare provision in a Muslim-majority country.

🌙As Ramadan begins, attention turns to zakat — one of the five pillars of Islam. As many Muslims choose to pay zakat during Ramadan, this month represents a key period for wealth redistribution.

But how much is actually paid? And to whom?
Find out➡️ https://ow.ly/C9rk50YhJMN

Max Gallien Umair Javed

Wolfram! Thank you for reading the book, and for the kind words! I really need to make it back to Berlin sometime soon to catch up!

Thank you for taking it on, and all the guidance along the way - which made it a much more readable book!

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Man I long for the day when I get to write opening paragraphs that aren't endless variations on "well, we know that the world is on fire".

Letter of the day (in the Times)

An impromptu panel here at #FfD4...

The Tax Era of Development: Taxing Smarter for Equity, Growth, and Resilience - ICTD Tax is not only the primary source of financing in lower-income countries, but also the lynchpin of development finance.

📝NEW POLICY BRIEF: With tax now the main source of dev't finance, countries are under pressure to raise tax revenue fast. But done poorly, these could have damaging effects. The key is to tax smarter - but how?

➡️ ow.ly/2VCf50Wg8NU

#FfD4 #Tax4Dev #TaxResearch

Public Support for Wealth and Progressive Taxes in Pakistan - ICTD This brief explores public support for wealth taxation and the factors that shape those attitudes in Pakistan.

NEW RESEARCH: Are Pakistanis supportive of wealth taxes? Here is what we found⬇️

1️⃣Support for wealth taxes cuts across class, income and gender
2️⃣It increases when people feel that taxes are spent well and transparently
3️⃣Trust in the state drives support

Find out more: www.ictd.ac/publication/...

FfD4 Side Event | From Insight to Impact: Harnessing Research Collaboration to Build Better Tax Systems - ICTD On July 3rd, the ICTD will host a side event at the Fourth International Conference on...

If you're coming to #FfD4 in Seville next week and are interested in talking the future of tax & development, get in touch! I'll be there with a wonderful delegation of the @ictdtax.bsky.social - and we have a side event well worth checking out:

www.ictd.ac/event/ffd4-s...

Public Support for Wealth and Progressive Taxes in Pakistan - ICTD This brief explores public support for wealth taxation and the factors that shape those attitudes in Pakistan.

That's some of the graphs - more detail in the full policy brief below - and a lot more questions to be asked!

This is part of a larger project @ictdtax.bsky.social & LUMS project with Vanessa van den Boogaard and Umair Javed - looking forward to continuing this work!

www.ictd.ac/publication/...

...perhaps the most important factor is trust in the state and the government - transparency and concerns about corruption are key drivers of support for new wealth taxes. There are key lessons in this: progressivity and transparency can both be a part of tax design and communication. (4/...)

Interestingly, if we dissect who supports new wealth taxes, people with a higher income are unexpectedly quite supportive! As are people who identify as supporters of the PMLN and the PPP. (3/...) However...

If we look at different tax proposals, we find that support is heterogeneous - with taxes that are structured more progressively being more popular. Notably, if we add more progressive structures to classical wealth taxes (like inheritance), they also become more popular! (2/...)

📰New data: Is there public support for new #progressive and #wealth_taxes in Pakistan?
Our policy brief dissects brand new public opinion data on a range of wealth and progressive tax proposals, based on a survey of 7500 voting-age Pakistanis.
What do we find? (1/...)
www.ictd.ac/publication/...

Really nice to see that the Journal of Borderland Studies considers 'Smugglers and States' a "must-read for scholars of political economy, border studies, and state formation". If that's you, the book is available here:

cup.columbia.edu/book/smuggle...

Your email will not find me.

Despite the expansion of border fences, these barriers 'shift criminal dynamics, destabilize border communities, and have far-reaching implications for regional trade relations.' #humanRights

For those working on border governance:

Centre Experts @maxgallien.bsky.social, Shalaka Thakur & Co-Director @weigand.bsky.social offer a valuable analysis in @foreignpolicy.com on what border walls actually achieve - and what they don’t 👇

Do Good Fences Actually Make Good Neighbors? The number of border walls worldwide has surged since the end of the Cold War.

Since the end of the Cold War, the number of border walls and fences around the world has sextupled. But do they actually work?
In this piece for @foreignpolicy.com, Shalaka Thakur, @weigand.bsky.social and I draw on our research and share some scepticism
foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/23/b...

UK must impose sanctions on Israel to meet legal obligations, say more than 800 lawyers Exclusive: Letter to PM signed by retired supreme court justices among others says lack of action will imperil international legal system

UK must impose sanctions on Israel to meet legal obligations, say more than 800 lawyers www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Migrants who arrived in UK after 2020 face five more years on settlement path Government’s migration crackdown set to double default period for those pursuing potential pathway to citizenship

This blithe attitude- oh we'll figure out if current migrants have to wait five more years or not, maybe they'll satisfy our nebulous economic contribution requirement and get fewer. It cannot hold. No-one high skilled will come to a country making it up as it goes along.

www.ft.com/content/7bad...

christ, what a day to be an immigrant cursed with the ability to read

Lazy weekend rexommendation: always a sucker for coming of age but really enjoyed this book, it's got a unique voice, poetry, wit and force that stays with you.

This, so very much this. Having researched borders and their porosity for a decade - it is really stunning how resilient the myth of the 'complete border control' is, and how much chaos and and nonsense it has caused.
It has never existed historically, and is entirely unreasonable to aim for now.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.