The Institute for Economic Studies - Europe

The aim of The Institute for Economic Studies Europe is to stand at the center of a worldwide network of students, scholars and other intellectuals. Since 1989, the Institute, a non profit organization registered in the state of Virginia, has aimed at discovering, developing and supporting the most outstanding people it could find among students, scholars and other intellectuals who share an interest in exploring and applying the principles of classical liberalism. For that purpose, IES uses or supports three different tools of teaching or of research. Every year we organize summer seminars somewhere in Europe, a summer university in Aix-en-Provence, France, and sponsors researchers or translations of major books.

Each of these activities aims at the spreading of classical liberalism which includes among its principles:

- the recognition of inalienable individual rights and the dignity and worth of each individual

- the protection of those rights through the institution of private property, contracts and the rule of law.

- the support of the ideal of voluntarism in human relations, including support of the free market mechanism in economic affairs and free movement of goods, ideas and people.

Applying this last principle, we at IES Europe try to make things change in a bottom-up approach : instead of attempts to convince the political sphere, it is rather in the people, at the level of the civil society, that we want to concentrate our efforts. We are driven by the faith that education and spreading of ideas can change the world, As Lord Keynes reminded us ideas matters, but their spreading takes time, and their becoming applied takes even longer. It takes time to change the minds of people. That is why we, at IES Europe, view our role in the long run.