Economics and policy In 1992, following graduation, Halligan joined his former university tutor
Robert Skidelsky at
The Social Market Foundation, the Westminster-based
think tank. Together with other economists from LSE, Oxford and Harvard, he co-founded
Russian Economic Trends, an academic journal that published macroeconomic data, analysis and commentary on Russia. He also helped to establish the Russian-European Centre for Economic Policy, an inter-governmental policy advisory group. Since 1997, Halligan has sat on the Policy Advisory Board of The Social Market Foundation. In 2010, he became a founder member of the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE), an
ESRC-funded research centre at the
University of Warwick. In 2017, Halligan was invited to join an expert advisory committee at the
Department for International Trade. He has also testified before a number of
Parliamentary committees. In April 2020, he called for the Government to build more social housing. In February 2021, he appeared before the Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee on
quantitative easing. In 2019, he published
Home Truths, which argues that the UK's housing shortage deprives vulnerable families of decent social housing.
Journalism In the early 1990s, Halligan wrote a weekly column for
The Moscow Times and covered Russian economics and politics for
The Economist and
The Economist Intelligence Unit. He also wrote about the
Soviet Union for
The Wall Street Journal and
Euromoney. In 1996, Halligan was appointed political correspondent at the
Financial Times. He went on to become economics correspondent at
Channel 4 News, where he remained until 2006. In 2006, he was appointed economics editor at
The Sunday Telegraph. From 2008 to 2010, he wrote a monthly column for
GQ. Halligan was a founding panellist on the daily television discussion show
CNN Talk. When the BBC axed the programme in 2019, Halligan said the corporation had made a "blindingly obvious mistake". Since 2004, he has also regularly presented standalone documentaries on Channel 4, including for
Dispatches, and sits on the jury of the
Royal Television Society's Specialist Journalist award. In March 2021, Halligan was named as economics and business editor at GB News and co-presenter of a daily lunchtime show with former
Labour Party MP
Gloria De Piero. From September 2021 to September 2022, Halligan presented his own show on GB News,
On The Money, which ran for an hour every weekday and focused on financial topics. On 1 September 2022, it was announced that the show was to be axed, with Halligan having an increased presence on other GB News programmes, centering around the
Cost of living crisis. In June 2024, Halligan departed GB News. Halligan has also written for
New Statesman,
Prospect, and
UnHerd.
Business Between 2008 and 2013, Halligan was Chief Economist at Prosperity Capital Management, an institutional asset management focussed on the Soviet Union. == Personal life ==