Adam Smith Institute

The Adam Smith Institute is Britain’s leading innovator of free-market economic and social policies. Named after the great Scottish economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, the Institute is guided by the principles of the free society. Since its founding, it has played a key role in pioneering practical initiatives to inject choice and competition into public services, extend personal freedom, reduce taxes, prune back regulation, and cut government waste.

The Institute develops and spreads these ideas through its research, reports, seminars, briefings for politicians and journalists; through its website and weblog; and through media pieces in the newspapers and on radio and TV.

An expert network

The Institute deliberately maintains only a small staff, based in Westminster, but achieves its considerable influence as a catalyst, bringing together and deploying the skills of an extensive network of experts that it has built up over many years – policy specialists, businesspeople, politicians, journalists, and others.

The Institute looks a few years ahead, seeking to anticipate upcoming issues that can be improved by sound thinking and criticism, and attempting to place solid free-market initiatives on the future agenda. It aims to develop future ideas that are both politically practicable and economically viable.

Staying effective

The Adam Smith Institute achieves the broadest possible impact because it is independent and non-party, maintaining good relations with policymakers across the political divide.

The Institute is non-profit, and relies on the support of a wide range of individuals, foundations and companies who understand the value of what it does in changing ideas and events. It also welcomes project sponsorship for its initiatives on individual policy issues.

Thinking and acting

The Institute is not just a think-tank - it is a do-tank. It became known in the 1980s for its pioneering work on privatization, contracting-out, tax reduction, and internal markets in health and education. Now it is leading the debates on deregulation, smaller government, and thoroughgoing public service reform.

In addition to its busy publishing programme Institute runs an extensive calendar of events for its subscribers, including House of Commons policy breakfasts, evening seminars, conferences, and Power Lunches with prominent players in the policymaking process. For the forward diary of events, click here.

Spreading ideas and debate

The Institute was the first UK think-tank to recognize the power of the internet and develop its own website, of which it is justly proud. All new Adam Smith Institute reports are now available free online, which has brought a hundredfold increase in the number of people reading them.

The Institute’s weblog - a website on which it posts short factual or opinion articles, on which others can comment - attracts over 3,000 unique visitors a day, making it Europe’s favourite think-tank blog. Again, this helps it to spread ideas and discover new free-market writers and thinkers.

Tens of thousands of people subscribe to the Institute’s fortnightly email bulletin, which makes wry comments on what Westminster is up to, and which is regularly hailed as the UK’s best think-tank bulletin.

Engaging future talent

Since its inception, the Adam Smith Institute has made a point of encouraging and engaging with young people who are interested in policy issues. Its annual sixth-form conferences attract hundreds of teenagers from schools all over the United Kingdom: and some of the first participants in these programmes are now front-bench politicians, newspaper editors, radio and TV producers – all valuable additions to the Institute’s expert network. For more on these events, click here.

The Institute’s Next Generation group provides a more regular meeting spot for students and young people who will form the next generation of leaders in public life. It gives them the opportunity to learn more about the policy process, to meet senior people involved in public life, and to become an effective part of the process themselves.

Pointing up the tax burden

Each year the Institute calculates Tax Freedom Day. This is the point in the year where average citizens have finally worked long enough to pay off all their tax obligations and can at last start earning for themselves. Tax Freedom Day is just one of the Adam Smith Institute’s many initiatives - but it has become a national institution, and gives people a clear picture of how the tax burden is rising.

Experienced leadership

The Institute was founded by St Andrews graduates who joined the ‘brain drain’ in the 1970s, but who returned with new ideas to bring to public policy debate in the UK, and still fulfil the Institute’s leadership role.

The Institute’s President, Dr Madsen Pirie, is well known in Westminster through his media appearances and newspaper articles. He taught philosophy in the United States and is author of several books on philosophy and logic, as well as on policy subjects such as privatization and political change.

Dr Eamonn Butler, the Institute’s Director, worked for the US House of Representatives and edited an insurance journal before devoting himself full-time to the Institute. Among other works, he has published biographies of great economists including FA Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.

Conferences

For over a decade, the Institute’s Conference Division has organized high-level international events for key decision-makers in business, government, and industry, focusing particularly on Eastern and Western Europe.

Playing your part

You can help the Adam Smith Institute to spread practical free-market ideas and to change events by becoming one of our growing army of subscribers.

Remember, the Institute’s work is wholly dependent on the support of those who understand the difference that it can make, and who know just how essential it is that good ideas are injected into the policymaking process.