For decades, economists have suggested that sustained economic growth is not possible without the crucial pillars of economic freedom and personal liberty. Colin Doran and Thomas Stratmann, in their groundbreaking research study, The Relationship between Economic Freedom and Poverty Rates: Cross Country Evidence, sought to analy...
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Since gaining independence in 1945, Indonesia’s government has pursued a harmful policy of food self-sufficiency that imposes severe import restrictions, tariffs, price controls, monopolies by state-owned enterprises, and barriers to entry—all in the name of independence. These laws increase the cost of food, resulting in widesp...
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For more than half a century, the Kerala Shops & Establishments Act has regulated labor standards and restrictions for commercial establishments within the state of Kerala, India. In this state of nearly 35 million people, the law controls everything from which days and for how many hours a shop can operate to when women can wor...
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Historically, Alberta has been a leader in sound economic governance within North America. However, that standing has declined in recent years due to poor public policy from across the political spectrum. To reverse this trend, the Fraser Institute launched the Alberta Prosperity Initiative (API) in 2012, seeking to explain to r...
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More than one million Costa Ricans—almost 20 percent of the country’s population—live in poverty while almost ten thousand receive “luxury pensions.” This privileged group, dubbed “Ticos Con Coronas” (or “Costa Ricans with Crowns”), receive an average monthly pension of US$4,495, with some receiving as much as US$24,000 per mont...
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Certificate of need (CON) laws require healthcare providers to seek regulatory approval before opening or expanding their facilities. Often a lengthy, costly, and unpredictable process, CON laws have decreased quality and access to care, while increasing costs for patients and providers. Since 2016, the Mercatus Center at George...
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Protecting endangered species is a fairly uncontroversial policy issue. While the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) has helped to prevent 99 percent of listed species from going extinct, only two percent of those species have ever recovered their populations to warrant no longer being listed. To improve this poor track record...
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Awarded annually since 2004, Atlas Network’s Templeton Freedom Award is named for the late investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. This prestigious prize honors Sir John’s legacy by recognizing Atlas Network’s partner organizations for exceptional and innovative contributions to the understanding of free enterprise and t...
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The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia has won the 2020 North America Liberty Award for their Equity Initiative for American Healthcare. Since 2016, the Mercatus Center has been researching and disseminating their findings on certificate-of-need (CON) requirements. CON laws force private healthcare providers...
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Sharing the message of liberty was a key theme of Liberty Forum & Freedom Dinner 2019, which brought together more than 800 liberty champions from six continents for two days of conference sessions, networking, and building new opportunities for change around the world. The Foundation for Economic Freedom, located in Quezon City...
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When it comes to effecting change, the first step is knowing the facts. Sometimes change starts with a story. For the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, that story came from an unlikely source: British Columbia.
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The Cairo-based Egyptian Center for Public Policy Studies (ECPPS) has been selected as this year’s winner of Atlas Network’s prestigious $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award for its “Better Budget for a Better Egypt” initiative, which helped bring about the country’s 25-point jump in the Open Budget Survey, fostered greater civic en...
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A little known law is costing Americans more than they know.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 — also known as the Jones Act — has been inflicting costs on Americans for almost 100 years. Three Atlas Network partners — the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center — are working to inform citizens...
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The Buckeye Institute has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. Too often, lives are defined by a single mistake. This is a story about human compassion, redemption, and commonsense solutions to complex public policy issues. It is a story about changing outdated, unjust, and arbitrary laws at th...
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The Commonwealth Foundation has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. Pennsylvania was sprinting toward financial meltdown with its unfunded pension liabilities and its state lawmakers apathetic to do anything about it. That was until a small think tank sounded the alarm in 2006. The Commonwealt...
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Mercatus Center at George Mason University has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. Ever-growing regulatory codes pose a very tangible and acutely felt burden on the lives of real people. These burdensome regulations — a term that under-communicates just how harmful their impact can be — get in...
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Lipa Taxpayers Association has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. With Croatia’s population declining for decades, its government ought to pursue policies that encourage growth. Instead, it pursued a policy that threatened to further push Croatians out with the 2017 passage of a tax on privat...
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Libertad y Progreso has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. A little over a century ago, Argentina was one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Yet decade after decade of economic mismanagement and a ballooning state has tanked its economy and ingrained a culture in which Argentines view their g...
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Egyptian Center for Public Policy Studies has been named a finalist for Atlas Network’s 2018 Templeton Freedom Award. After the dust settled following the Arab Spring in 2011, Egypt’s score fell dramatically on the Open Budget Index, which measures government transparency and citizen engagement in the budget-making process. Seek...
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During a recent visit to Washington, D.C., I met with several think tanks and foundations, all of whom work with organizational partners in Africa. What struck me, anecdotally, was the absence of Botswana in all of it. Who works with them? Is it a case that few see the need to mention given its relative success?
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Awarded since 2004 the Templeton Freedom Award is named for the late investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. The award annually honors his legacy by identifying and recognizing the most exceptional and innovative contributions to the understanding of free enterprise, and the public policies that encourage prosperity, inn...
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Atlas Network’s Lights, Camera, Liberty workshop brought together 57 participants from 35 organizations in 15 countries to rethink their approach to marketing, communications, and storytelling. During this powerhouse 4-day interactive workshop in Los Angeles, participants learned to use best practices in product and idea messagi...
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The impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico and the attempts in the months thereafter to ship aid materials to the island have shown the significant negative economic impact of a nearly 100-year-old law which has hindered the rebuilding of Puerto Rico.
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Marginal Revolution University (MRU) is building the world’s largest online library of free economics education videos – currently weighing in at more than 900 videos.
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It is a great honor for me to give the Liggio Lecture here at Atlas Network’s Liberty Forum. Leonard Liggio truly was the Ambassador of Liberty throughout his amazing career. He was also a great friend and mentor to many of us in this room. My first interactions with Leonard were through the Institute for Humane Studies in the e...
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Organizational culture weighs heavily in the fiscal health of states, according to The Mercatus Center at George Mason University’s recently published annual study, “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition,” now in its fourth year.
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During the past four decades, the Cato Institute has established itself as the world’s premier libertarian policy think tank. In May, Cato celebrated its 40th anniversary with events that included remarks from such notable figures as Rand Paul, George Will, P. J. O'Rourke, Dave Barry, and Charles Murray. Articles, videos, and a...
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Nobody brings the ideas of freedom and sound economics to life quite like the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), through its decades of publications and in-person seminars, and today through its engaging website content. Now FEE is holding its first annual conference, FEEcon, featuring more than 70 sessions and 10 distinct...
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Rather than raise taxes to cover budget shortfalls, the Pennsylvania state government has indicated that it plans to streamline government programs and cut wasteful spending. The Commonwealth Foundation, an Atlas Network partner based in Harrisburg, is stepping up to the challenge of presenting the government with prudent and pr...
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Federal tax regulations in the United States are incomprehensibly complex, with the Internal Revenue Code now reaching 74,608 pages that contain 2.4 million words, as well as an additional 7.7 million words of regulatory clarification from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The annual cost of compliance has reached more than $1...
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The excessive spending of public institutions in Puerto Rico, combined with a crushing regulatory system, have left the territory with a struggling economy and an ongoing government debt crisis. Atlas Network partner Centro para Renovación Económica, Crecimiento y Excelencia (CRECE) is at the forefront of a new reform movement i...
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The ideas of liberty can only have an impact on the world if they are communicated to others effectively, and the most compelling examples of such communication are worthy of recognition and reward. As such, journalists, bloggers and other writers are hereby invited to enter their work in the 2016 Bastiat Prize for Journalism, p...
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There is artistic and cultural value in maintaining historically significant buildings, but preservation efforts can also lead to public safety risks. Earthquakes threaten the older foundations and facades of heritage-designated buildings in New Zealand, explains “Deadly Heritage,” a recent joint report of Deloitte New Zealand a...
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The world is filled with problems, but few people recognize how markets have dramatically improved quality of life throughout the world in recent decades. Advocates of free markets are often drowned out by mistaken cries for protectionism, so the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) established its Think Conference l...
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Global crude oil prices finally started to creep back up in June in response to both political disruptions to oil production and growing demand. This trend — a reversal of what we’ve seen since 2014 — may be a good sign for producers, but it also introduces volatility into the market. This not only poses a threat to producers as...
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At nearly $20 trillion and counting the U.S. national debt grows still larger every day, as federal officials borrow money hand over fist to finance uncontrolled spending. It’s easy to overlook state-level finances in comparison, but the fiscal health of states makes a tremendous difference in whether individuals and families th...
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Think tanks conducting innovative research into economics, public policy, and social science have proliferated in recent years, and the Think Tanks and Civil Society Program at the University of Pennsylvania has held an annual North America Summit for the past three years to discuss the challenges that think tanks face. Co-hoste...
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Government planning and management of the economy can have disastrous consequences that last for generations. Puerto Rico today faces a fiscal crisis that traces its origins to profligate public corporations set up during the 1940s, in the style of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, explain a set of recent publications...
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The ideas of liberty can seem simple at first glance, but complex arguments undergird the value of individual freedom, property rights, and free markets. Five years ago, the Institute for Humane Studies launched a new program, Learn Liberty, devoted to making those arguments accessible and understandable for the online media of...
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The freedom to relocate and “vote with one’s feet” can sometimes spur local governments to compete with favorable policies — but this effect only works well when people can make informed decisions about which cities are actually better or worse in relevant categories. The Libertas Institute, an Atlas Network partner in Utah, is...
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The institutions, rules, and norms of civil society serve as the foundation for free markets, and perhaps more than any other economist, the research of Nobel laureate economist and historian Douglass North emphasized the role of these institutions in fostering widespread human flourishing. North, who long served as a member of...
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Canada has become a model for how to slash red tape and reform policy, fostering new economic freedom and growth, argues Atlas Network partner the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In a new study, “Cutting Red Tape in Canada: A Regulatory Reform Model for the United States?,” the organization highlights a law passed th...
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Most U.S. state governments are nearly back to fiscal normalcy following the Great Recession of 2007–09, but there still exist troubling signs that states are ignoring the risks in unfunded programs, according to a new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. States that appear to be fiscally robust must take s...
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Most state and local public pensions are chronically underfunded, and use accounting standards that understate their true actuarial risk. Long-term financial solvency requires fundamental public pension reform, but government employees don’t want to see their benefits scaled back so changes to the system are a sticky subject for...
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While corporate welfare, whether in the form of subsidies or bailouts, is more often associated with the federal government, state governments also regularly use generous, targeted subsidy packages to entice corporations to locate within their borders. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University use data from the Subsidy Trac...
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The Lights, Camera, Liberty! program is a grant and training opportunity that Atlas Network offers to U.S. and international partners, helping organizations transform the way they market messages through online video. This year’s winner will be announced at Liberty Forum and Freedom Dinner, November 12-13, 2014. The three finali...
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Patrick McLaughlin and Robert Greene, researchers for Atlas Network partner Mercatus Center, published a paper on the unintended consequences of accumulating regulations in the U.S. earlier this year. As of mid-2013 there were 235 volumes of U.S. Federal government regulation; that's 18 times the regulation the U.S. had in 1950....
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