Sept. 18 – An Italian institute is among the six finalists for the prestigious Templeton Freedom Award 2013: the Istituto Bruno Leoni (IBL) will participate in the award ceremony for the best examples of think tanks on free market analysis, to be held on November 14 in New York. The winner will receive a prize of $100,000 , while the other five will receive $ 5,000 each. The Turin-bases Institute entered the finals thanks to its “Liberalization Index,” which, since 2007, documents and assesses the degree of opening up to competition of the Italian economy. The 2014 edition will be released in October. Alongside IBL, the Indian Centre for Civil Society (thanks to its a communication campaign in favor of vouchers and free schools), the Centro de Investigacion para el Desarrollo Mexico (for the impact it had on Mexican public debates), the American Mackinac Center for Public Policy (for their campaign on the right to work), the British Taxpayers’ Alliance (for its proposal for an ambitious tax reform) and another U.S. institution, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (for their project promoting change within the culture of criminal punishment in Texas) have been selected. “The Liberalization Index is an important product of original research and represents an attempt to give a measure to the degree of economic freedom, and its variations, in our country – said Alberto Mingardi, director general of the IBL – We are pleased that the importance of this attempt is recognized at an international level: it is a true praise to the skill and dedication of the research team.”
