Cork University Business School and the Department of Economics
are pleased to invite you to the
First Annual Longfield Lecture in Economics:
Philippe Legrain, Senior Research Fellow, London School of Economics
“Immigrants: Your country needs them”
Wednesday 22nd March 2017 at 5pm
Venue: Boole 3, UCC
All are welcome
Author’s Bio: Philippe Legrain is Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics. He was formerly special adviser to the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, independent economic adviser to the President of the European Commission, and head of the team that provided him with strategic policy advice. He is the author of European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right, Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy After the Crisis, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, and Open World: The Truth about Globalisation. He is a frequent media commentator and contributor. You can get more information about Philippe at http://www.philippelegrain.com/
The Longfield Lectures: The purpose of the annual lecture series is to invite eminent speakers to address contemporary economic issues for a general audience, to contribute positively to public discourse. This is an important mission for us as an institution and as academics, and all the more with current global and local challenges. The lecture is open to all. It is organised in association with the Economics Society.
The lecture series is named after one of Cork’s foremost economist, Samuel Mountiford Longfield (1802 -1884), who was born in Desert Serges, near Enniskeane, in West Cork. He was appointed the first Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin in 1832. According to his entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica he “rivalled [David] Ricardo’s influence, especially Ricardo’s notion that value is determined by the labour required to provide a good or service”. Joseph Schumpeter claimed that Longfield provided “a reasonably complete and reasonably correct theory of distribution based upon the marginal productivity principle, not only the marginal cost principle”, which means Longfield was an early forerunner of marginalism.
In addition, Longfield challenged the Malthusian idea that wages would remain stuck at a subsistence level and, optimistic about future economic growth, he presciently argued that innovation in agriculture would offset the effects of increased population. Longfield was actively engaged in policy advice and argued for the introduction of a Poor Law in Ireland that would be based along the lines of the 1834 English Poor Law.
We are very happy to highlight the contribution of this Cork-born economist and celebrate his achievements in his native place.
More information on Longfield is available at http://www.mruniversity.com/courses/great-economists-classical-economics-and-its-forerunners/mountifort-longfield,https://www.tcd.ie/Secretary/FellowsScholars/discourses/discourses/1982_A.A.%20Tait%20on%20M.%20Longfield.pdf,https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mountifort-Longfield, and https://www.jstor.org/stable/40607755?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.