IME Awarded 2006 Templeton Freedom Award

In February 2006, the Institute for Market Economics was recognized as a winner of a 2006 Templeton Freedom Award Grant out of over 80 institute applications from all over the world.

The Templeton Freedom Awards is a program run by Atlas Foundation (www.atlasusa.org) that rewards thinks tanks that are making the greatest contributions for promoting freedom as well as those with the most future promise.

IME's Economic Policy Review won the prize because:

  1. It has been pioneering public debate of topics and issues of immediate or long tem concern such as: first surveys of transaction costs, informal labor and informal economy in Bulgaria and the Balkans, on mortgages, business environment and costs of dealing with the government;

  2. Over 200 draft laws and regulations were assessed in the bulletin;

  3. The average reprinting rate of the newsletter is 80% for 2005 and we expect it to pass 90% in 2006 as it is gaining popularity.

  4. It disseminated methods of basic economics and cost-benefit analysis;

  5. The Economic Policy Review produces supporting materials for other IME websites and print product, e.g.: the EU accession sub-page (the most visited part of the IME Web), the educational page of the Economics Access Station of Internet (www.easibulgaria.org), the flat tax bulletin and the website (www.ime.bg/flat, the monthly bulletin goes to the desk of every MP and a minister), the cost-benefit analysis (www.ria-studies.net), the web page of mortgage finance and real estate (www.ceemortgagefinance.org and its more popular Bulgarian version), the sub-page on welfare reforms, etc.

  6. We have introduced to the Bulgarian audience via EPR and EASI a great number of unknown economists and writers, some of them have already become relatively popular, e.g. Bastiat, von Hayek, Menger, von Mises [1] , Curzon-Prize, Lee, Gwartney, Stroup, Swanepool, Pejovic, Paul Belien and others, to mention just a few.

  7. We were the first to publish the Magna Carta in Bulgarian, and via EPR highlighted topics of economic history.

  8. EPR had made IME associates very popular. This helped some of them successfully run for parliament with one colleague during the 2005 parliamentary elections being the most televised, interviewed and printed candidate (entering politics anew and being more popular with the media than former PMs, finance ministers, and the like).

  9. There are more than 3,000 e-mail addresses subscribed to the Economic Policy Review in Bulgarian. The traffic of the sub-page of the bulletin (http://ime-bg.org/pr_bg/) amounts to an average of 5,000 visitors per week. Thus, the circulation of the newsletter exceeds many of the established daily newspapers in the country. The newsletter is extensively quoted and cited by journalists, economists, and broadcasters.

 

 

 


 

[1] At the time we published them, there were no translations in Bulgarian.


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