Speakers

Gurcharan Das
Author and former CEO, Procter & Gamble India

is an author, commentator, and public intellectual. He is best known for a much-acclaimed trilogy on a lifelong search for a flourishing life based on the classical Indian goals of life. India Unbound was the first, on artha or ‘material well-being,’ it offers a personal account of India’s economic rise and is available in 17 languages and filmed by the BBC— the Guardian called it 'a quiet earthquake.' The second, The Difficulty of Being Good, on dharma, 'moral well- being’, illuminates our day to day moral dilemmas, and ‘one of the best things I’ve read about contribution of great literature to ethical thought,’ according to the philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. Kama: The Riddle of Desire, on the third goal, teaches how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life. His latest book, Another Sort of Freedom, is a memoir and a contemporary take on moksha, the fourth and final aim of life

He graduated in philosophy with honors from Harvard University, where he has been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for ‘high attainments in liberal scholarship.’ He later attended Harvard Business School (AMP) where he is featured in four case studies. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Health & Beauty, Strategic Planning) before he retired early to become a full-time writer. He writes a regular column for the Times of India and other Indian language papers, and contributes to Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He is a speaker to some of the world’s largest corporations. His other books include India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state, which was on the FT’s best books for 2013; a novel, A Fine Family; a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm, and an anthology, Three Plays. He has edited for Penguin a 15-volume economic and business history of India. He lives in Delhi with his wife.

Douglas J. Den Uyl
Vice President Emeritus and Benjamin A. Rogge Resident Scholar, Liberty Fund, Inc.

attended Kalamazoo College (B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy), the University of Chicago (M.A. in Political Science), and Marquette University (Ph.D. in Philosophy). He is interested in the history of ideas and has published essays or books on Spinoza, Smith, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and others. His interests also include moral and political theory.He is co-author with Douglas Rasmussen of Norms of Liberty, The Perfectionist Turn, and recently The Realist Turn (2020). He co-founded the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society, The North American Spinoza Society, and The International Adam Smith Society and was its first President. He taught Philosophy and was Department Chair and Full Professor at Bellarmine University before coming to Liberty Fund where he is now Vice President Emeritus and Benjamin A. Rogge Resident Scholar.

James J. Heckman
Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development, The University of Chicago

James Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago. He has devoted his professional life to understanding the origins of major social and economic questions related to nequality, social mobility, discrimination, and the formation of skills and regulation in labor markets, as well as to devising and applying economically interpretable empirical strategies for understanding and addressing these questions. His work spans contexts and cultures.Current research at CEHD includes analyzing the impact of early childhood programs around the world by studying the immediate

iand long- term impacts of interventions (including the impacts in midlife on health and on other family members), both in the United States and in a new project in China. His research also uses original data gathered in the U.S., China and Germany to measure preferences and traits to help inform governments, schools and teachers about how socioemotional can help students achieve their full potential. In 2000, Heckman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the microeconometrics of diversity and heterogeneity and for establishing a sound causal basis for public policy evaluation. He has received numerous other awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Medal, the Jacob Mincer Award, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics, the Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin, the Theodore W. Schultz Award, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, the Frisch Medal, the Dan David Prize, and the Chinese Government Friendship Award. Heckman has a B.A. in Mathematics from Colorado College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He has been at the University of Chicago since 1973.

Nils Karlson
Founding President and CEO, Ratio Institute, and Associate Professor, Uppsala University

is an economist and political scientist. He is the founder of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm and has been a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University, Hoover Institution, and a Professor in Political Science at Linköping University. His research is focused on institutional change and the interaction between politics, markets, and civil society.He has published over 30 books and numerous academic papers. His latest book in English is Reviving Classical Liberalism against Populism (Palgrave MacMillan 2024), available open access here. Other books in English include

Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies (Palgrave MacMillan 2018), The State of State. An Inquiry Concerning the Role of Invisible Hands in Politics and Civil Society. (Almquist & Wiksell International 1993, also published by Transaction Press 2002, and Routledge 2017), and Bureaucrats or Markets in Innovation Policy? (Ratio/Publit 2019) with Sandström, C and Wennberg, K.). He is a trustee of the board of the Mont Pelerin Society and a member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

James Lawson

is Chairman of the Adam Smith Institute. The Adam Smith Institute is one of the world’s leading think tanks. It was ranked first in the world among independent think tanks and as the best domestic and international economic policy think tank in the UK by the University of Pennsylvania. Independent, non-profit and non-partisan, the Institute is at the forefront of making the case for free markets and a free society, through education, research, publishing, and media outreach. Outside of the ASI, James is Director Programmes at Helsing, leading business with customers like the British Army and Strategic Command. Helsing is a new type of defence company, building AI to serve our democracies.

Before Helsing, James was most recently a Senior Special Adviser in the Cabinet Office. As Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer for Defence, he led their landmark agreement with UK MOD. He has also held leadership roles at two AI startups, DataRobot and WorkFusion, supporting customers including Bank of America, Santander, Spotify, Chanel and Telefonica with digital transformation. At Deloitte he advised customers such as the Metropolitan Police and Co-op. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, with a particular focus on events since 1870. His recent ASI research has focused on the Covid-19 response and policies to nurture Artificial Intelligence capabilities in the UK. James is an Adviser to IQ Capital, Research Adviser at The Entrepreneurs Network, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and member of the Mont Pelerin Society (of which he was the youngest ever joiner).

Peter Mentzel
Senior Fellow, Liberty Fund, Inc.

studied Philosophy and History at the University of Connecticut, and went on to get his Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington in 1994. From 1995 to 2007, he was a professor in the History Department at Utah State University. He joined the staff at Liberty Fund, Inc, in 2008 as a Senior Fellow.Dr. Mentzel's research interests include the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, European Intellectual History, and Nationalism. Besides his contributions to Liberty Fund's website, he has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as The East European Quarterly, The Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Nations and Nationalism and Turcica, as well as numerous

contributions to edited collections. He is the author of Transportation Technology and Imperialism in the Ottoman Empire, and The Travelers's History of Venice. He is editor of For God and Country: Essays on Religion and Nationalism; Islam in the Balkans; and (with Henry T. Edmondson III) Imagining Europe: Essays on the History and Future of the European Union. A Memoir (U. of Chicago Press, 1999), which was a New York Times Notable Book. Her scientific work has been on economic history, especially British. Her recent book Bourgeois Equality is a study of Dutch and British economic and social history. She has written on British economic "failure" in the 19th century, trade and growth in the 19th century, open field agriculture in the middle ages, the Gold Standard, and the Industrial Revolution. Her philosophical books include The Rhetoric of Economics (University of Wisconsin Press 1st ed. 1985; 2nd ed. 1998), If You're So Smart: The

Alberto Mingardi
Director General, Istituto Bruno Leoni

is Director General of Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy’s free-market think tank, which he helped to establish in 2004. He has specialized in the study of antitrust and of healthcare systems. He also studies the history of political thought and is now writing a monograph on English libertarian Thomas Hodgskin after having written mainly on Herbert Spencer and Antonio Rosmini He authored or edited several books, including Herbert Spencer (New York & London: Continuum, 2011), Eppur si muove: Come cambia la sanità in Europa, tra pubblico e privato [And yet it moves: how Europe healthcare is changing, in between government and the private sector] (Torino: IBL Libri, editor w/Gabriele Pelissero, 2010) and translated into English, Antonio Rosmini, The Constitution Under Social Justice (Lexington Books, 2003).

His commentaries have appeared in major Italian newspapers, and he frequently appears on Italian radio and tv. Internationally, his opinion pieces have also been published by The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Pavia.

Andrew Morriss
Professor, Texas A&M University

is Professor in the Bush School of Government & Public Service and the School of Law at Texas A&M University. He received his AB from Princeton University, his JD and Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, his PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Master of Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University. His primary areas of research are international financial centers, regulation of business and the environment, and empirical legal studies. Professor Morriss has taught in the Cayman Islands, China, Guatemala, Guernsey, Greece, Hong Kong, Jersey, and Venezuela and lectured in Cambodia, Italy, Nepal, and the United Kingdom.

He is affiliated with the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University and the Property and Environment Research Center, Bozeman, Montana. He previously served as Dean of the School of Law and the School of Innovation at Texas A&M and as Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. Before coming to Texas A&M, he held the D. Paul & Charlene A. Jones Chair in Law at the University of Alabama, the H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author or coauthor of more than sixty book chapters and scholarly articles as well as the coauthor of Regulation by Litigation (Yale University Press, 2008) and the editor of Regulatory Competition and Offshore Finance (AEI Press, 2010). He served as Chair of the Cayman Financial Review from 2009 to 2017.

Walter Olson
Senior Fellow Cato Institute

is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and an author known for his writing on law, public policy, and regulation. He is the author of The Litigation Explosion and three other books on the American legal system and for more than twenty years wrote Overlawyered, one of the most popular blogs about law. He writes frequently on issues of election law and democratic process and chaired a series of commissions in the state of Maryland addressing redistricting and gerrymandering.

He served as an editor of Regulation magazine under then-editors Antonin Scalia and Murray Weidenbaum. He has a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and also studied economics at the graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Tom G. Palmer
George M. Yeager Chair for Advancing Liberty and Executive Vice President for International Programs, Atlas Network

Tom is Director General of Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy’s free-market think tank, which he helped to establish in 2004. He has specialized in the study of antitrust and of healthcare systems. He also studies the history of political thought and is now writing a monograph on English libertarian Thomas Hodgskin after having written mainly on Herbert Spencer and Antonio Rosmini He authored or edited several books, including Herbert Spencer (New York & London: Continuum, 2011), Eppur si muove: Come cambia la sanità in Europa, tra pubblico e privato [And yet it moves: how Europe healthcare is changing, in between government and the private sector] (Torino: IBL Libri, editor w/Gabriele Pelissero, 2010) and translated into English, Antonio Rosmini, The Constitution Under Social Justice (Lexington Books, 2003).

His commentaries have appeared in major Italian newspapers, and he frequently appears on Italian radio and tv. Internationally, his opinion pieces have also been published by The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Pavia.

Benjamin Powell
Executive Director of the Free Market Institute and Professor of Economics, Texas Tech University

is the Executive Director of the Free Market Institute and Professor of Economics in the Area of Energy Commerce & Business Economics of the Rawls College of Business. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and taught at San Jose State University and Suffolk University prior to joining Texas Tech.Ben's research focuses on the economics of immigration and the economics of sweatshop labor and contributes to scholarly literature in Austrian economics, public choice, and institutional economics. He has published more than 75 scholarly articles

and policy studies.Ben's research findings have been reported in hundreds of popular press outlets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He also writes frequently for the popular press. His popular writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New York Post, The Dallas Morning News and many other outlets. He has appeared on numerous radio, podcast, and television programs on networks including Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and Showtime. He was a regular guest commentator on Fox Business Network's Freedom Watch and Stossel.

Lant Pritchett
Visiting Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science

is a development economist from Idaho. After graduating from BYU with a BS in Economics in 1983 he attended MIT and received his PhD in 1988. He worked for the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, including living in Indonesia from 1998 to 2000 and in India from 2004 to 2007. He also taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2000 to 2004 and from 2007 to 2018.He was the the Research Director of the RISE Programme at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government from 2018 to 2023. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at London School of Economics and is the co-founder and Research Director of LaMP (Labor Mobility Partnerships).

He has published six books, been part of the team of two World Development Reports (1994 and 2004), and written over a hundred journal articles, book chapters, and working papers with over fifty different co-authors. He has written on a range of development issues including: economic growth, education, labor mobility, state capability, health, development assistance, social capital, population, international trade, safety net programs and methods of project evaluation. He was born in Utah, raised in Idaho and has lived in five countries, worked in dozens, and has visited more countries than he is years old. He has been happily married to Diane Tueller Pritchett since 1981 and has three children and four grandchildren.

Shruti Rajagopalan
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, and Fellow, Classical Liberal Institute

is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where she leads the Indian Political Economy Program and Emergent Ventures India. She is a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU School of Law and an Innovation Fellow with Schmidt Futures.Before joining the Mercatus Center she was an Associate Professor of Economics at State University of New York, Purchase College. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. She has a BA (Hons) Economics and LL.B. from University of Delhi; and an LL.M. from the European Masters in Law and Economics Program at University of Hamburg, Ghent University, and University of Bologna.

Shruti’s broad area of interest is the economic analysis of comparative legal and political systems. Her research interests specifically include law and economics, public choice theory, and constitutional economics. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, law reviews, and books. She is also the host of the Ideas of India podcast. She currently writes a substack on Indian political economy and culture called Get Down and Shruti. She used to write a fortnightly column called The Impartial Spectator in Mint. She has also published opinion editorials on Indian political economy in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Real Clear Politics, Mint, The Hindu: Business Line, and The Indian Express.

Max Rangeley
Editor and Manager The Cobden Centre

has run the Cobden Centre, a think tank founded by a British member of Parliament, since 2014 and has served on the boards of other think tanks in London and Brussels. He has put an emphasis on emerging technologies, including organising the Blockchain Summit in the European Parliament in 2016; attendees included the IMF,World Bank, United Nations, OECD and Europol among others, the first of its kind in the world. Max also organised and moderated the Future of Artificial Intelligence roundtable discussions in the European Parliament and has given many other speeches around the world on AI, blockchain and economics. He recently wrote a book with a UK member of Parliament on the problems caused by central bank policies in recent years and is currently working on two more books to be published by Springer.

Max was initially given a scholarship to do a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in his 20s, but turned this down to set up a microchip company which was featured on BBC World News among other media and whose customers include Facebook, Google, Sony, Oracle, Paypal and Salesforce.

Gonzalo Schwarz
President and CEO, Archbridge Institute

is the President & CEO of the Archbridge Institute. Gonzalo focuses on researching and writing about the American Dream, social mobility, the economics of human flourishing, economic development, and entrepreneurship. Gonzalo has a BA in economics from the Catholic University of Bolivia and an MA in economics from George Mason University.Growing up around the world in Uruguay, Israel, Ecuador, and Bolivia, he saw firsthand how poverty and socioeconomic challenges affect individuals and societies. This led him to a lifelong curiosity about what leads people to flourish and achieve their fullest potential. In 2016, Gonzalo pursued his own American Dream and founded the Archbridge Institute, an organization dedicated to removing barriers that prevent individuals across the globe from bettering their lives.

Gonzalo has written for media publications such as USA Today, Newsweek, The Hill, Real Clear Politics, the Washington Examiner, and Merion West, among others. He is the author of the Archbridge Institute’s annual American Dream Snapshot and editor of two publications focused on social mobility in Europe and Latin America. Gonzalo has more than a decade of experience working for think tanks and policy organizations. In his free time, Gonzalo loves to spend time with his family, read, and watch fútbol (the appropriate name for soccer).

Judy Shelton

is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy and former U.S. Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, she has testified before the U.S. Senate Banking, Senate Foreign Relations, House Banking, House Foreign Affairs, and Joint Economic Committee. Shelton was a nominee for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2020. Shelton has been consulted on international economic/financial issues by national security officials at the White House, U.S. Congress, and the Pentagon. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as a National Fellow, and she became a Hoover Senior Research Fellow (1985–1995).

She is the author of The Coming Soviet Crash: Gorbachev’s Desperate Pursuit of Credit in Western Financial Markets (1989) and Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System (1994). Her forthcoming book in 2024 is entitled Good as Gold: How to Unleash the Power of Sound Money. Shelton's popular articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Hill, and The Weekly Standard. She often provides commentary for CNBC and Fox Business on monetary and financial issues. Shelton was an economic advisor for the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform chaired by Jack Kemp (1995–96). She was a founding member of the board of directors of Empower America and has also served on the board of directors for Hilton Hotels and Atlantic Coast Airlines. She also taught international finance as a visiting professor at the DUXX Graduate School of Business in Monterrey, Mexico (1995–2001). Shelton has further served as Senior Fellow and Director of the Sound Money Project at the Atlas Network where she authored the monographs, A Guide to Sound Money (2010) and Fixing the Dollar Now (2011). She holds a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Utah with an emphasis on finance and international economics.

Lawrence H. White
Professor, George Mason University

is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Known for his work on market-based monetary systems, his Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? was published in 2023. He is also the author of The Clash of Economic Ideas (2012), The Theory of Monetary Institutions (1999), Free Banking in Britain (2nd ed. 1995), and Competition and Currency (1989). He co-edited Renewing the Search for a Monetary Constitution(2015). Professor White’s research has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Economic History Review, and other leading economics journals. His popular writings have appeared in The Wall St. Journal and elsewhere.

White holds an AB from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin. In May 2023 gave the keynote address at the annual Swiss National Bank conference on Cryptoassets and Financial Innovation. He is monetary policy advisor to the layer-one blockchain project Prasaga, and is an advisor to the nonprofit stablecoin rating agency Bluechip.

Luigi Zingales
Robert C.McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, The University of Chicago

is the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2014 he served as President of the American Finance Association. In July 2015 he became Director of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago. His interests span from corporate governance and financial development to political economy and the economic effects of culture. He has published extensively in the major economics and financial

journals, and wrote two best-selling books: Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003) with Raghu Rajan, and A Capitalism for the People (2012). Since January 2018, he has co-hosted the podcast Capitalisn’t, which explores how capitalism can go wrong and what we can do to fix it. Zingales received a bachelor's degree in economics summa cum laude from Università Bocconi in 1987 and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992

Parth Shah
Co-Founder and Director, Indian School of Public Policy, and Founder-President, Centre for Civil Society

Parth Shah is Founder and President of Centre for Civil Society, whose research and advocacy work centres on the themes of economic freedom (law, liberty and livelihood campaign), choice and competition in education (fund students, not schools), property right approach for the environment (terracotta vision of stewardship), and good governance (new public management and the duty to publish). He has conceptualised and organised liberal educational programs for the Indian youth including Liberty & Society Seminars, Jeevika Livelihood Documentary Competition, and Researching Reality Internship Program.

Shah is on the editorial board of EducationWorld, Vishleshan, and Khoj, and is informal advisor to many non-profits. He is the youngest Indian member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia

Jay Battacharya

Surjit Bhalla

Gabriel Calzada

Gurcharan Das

Douglas Den Uyl

James J. Heckman

Roberta Herzberg

Nils Karlson

James Lawson

Deirdre McCloskey

Peter Mentzel

Alberto Mingardi

Andrew Morriss

Walter Olson

Tom G. Palmer

Arvind Panagariya

Aaron Ross Powell

Benjamin Powell

Lant Pritchett

Shruti Rajagopalan

Max Rangeley

Rahul Sagar

Gonzalo Schwarz

Judy Shelton

Lawrence H. White

Luigi Zingales

Parth j shah

Lawrence H. White

Luigi Zingales

Hosted by

MANAGED BY :-