webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Inst of Econ Affairs IEA/IPA

note; 2 sim names

AUSTRIAN

LOMBORG

MASTER RES

DENIAL BP EXXON DDT THOMAS PYLE

ROBERT BRadley IHS IER/AEA

BREXIT

see bate, morris

---

How a ‘Pro-Climate’ Charity Channelled Cash to a Koch-Funded Think Tank - DeSmog

Friedrich von Hayek, the architect of a Thatcherism defined by its the privatisation, tax breaks and strike breaking, would be officially recognised in December 1984. He had already received the Nobel Prize for Economics—but this was the real highlight.

Hayek was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by the Queen, on the prime minister’s recommendation, for “services to the study of economics”.

The audience with the Queen was followed by a jubilant dinner with family and friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs. “I’ve just had the happiest day of my life,” Hayek said.

Margaret Thatcher in turn thanked Fisher, Harris, and her sponsors at the IEA during its 30th anniversary dinner at Grosvenor House in April 1987.

Fisher flew over from the United States for the auspicious occasion. He was at this point 72 years old, and finally considering retirement.

He had recently hired John Blundell, a childhood admirer of the IEA and a friend of Thatcher’s, to take over as president of his US-based Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Effective fundraiser

Blundell was then head of the Institute of Humane Studies, with a reputation as “a highly effective manager and fundraiser”.

Fisher had a lot to celebrate. Thirty years ago his ideas were at the very margins of respectability, and the free market seemed like an economist’s shameful fantasy.

Yet, during the previous year alone, the government had implemented the “Big Bang”, with regulations for the savings and investment industry torn asunder. Then, in December 1986, British Gas was sold off in its entirety for £5.6 billion.

The anniversary dinner was held. Lord Blake told the dinner guests: “No single body has contributed more than the IEA to the long overdue destruction of étatisme and to the recovery of Britain.”

Finally, it was Thatcher’s turn to speak. “Anyone who dared to challenge the conventional wisdom of the post-war consensus was derided, pilloried, criticised, frowned upon, and looked down upon as being either reactionary, pitiful, or ignorant,” she said.

“The IEA dared to challenge that. You did not say, as so many others did so, ‘what can a few people do among so many’.”

“You set out to challenge, to change public sentiment… once you, with your courage, gave expression to other views, others followed… what we have achieved could never have been done without the leadership of the Institute of Economic Affairs.”

John Blundell was in the United States at the time, but soon got hold of the gossip from the night. “I heard she was infuriated at how long the 10 men ahead of her spoke,” he told the author.

Bleeding heart

“She tried to convince Fisher that evening to allow the Tory party to take over the IEA, and he was appalled at the idea, and said ‘no way!’” Lawson, it appears, did not attend.

He was, at that time, working on a project to tie aide to developing countries to Thatcherite economic reforms. As he himself said, “I was not known, for good reason, as a bleeding heart.”

Harris, the indefatigable fundraiser, made good use of Thatcher’s kind words. He wrote to British American Tobacco, British Petroleum, and Esso (later to become part of ExxonMobil), asking for an increase in contributions.

“If you had been at the anniversary dinner and heard the PM say ‘what has been achieved would never have been done without the leadership of the IEA, you would agree we should do all we can to strengthen its work in the decisive years ahead,” he wrote in a note to Patrick Sheehy, the non-smoking BAT chairman.

“You have been among our strongest supporters over the years, and are already entitled to share the tributes paid to our success. I question whether I dare address a further appeal to you for the fund of £600,000, to acquire the freehold of 2 Lord North Street or an alternative permanent address. Before going public, I’d like to collect pledges for at least £200,000 from a dozen or so special friends.”

Internal documents released after legal action show that BAT agreed to pay £10,000 to the appeal. “We didn’t get anything out of it except we got some ideas, and we talked about free enterprise and the market economy and things like that.”

Capitalist environment

“They got a lot of support from us,” Sheehy told the author. “The benefit to shareholders is that, in a capitalist company, you would want a capitalist environment to thrive… The less regulation the better. Although there’s obviously got to be some, but it’s got to be a minimum.”

British Petroleum, then 31 per cent owned by the state, agreed to donate £20,000 on top of its annual subscription of £10,000 a year. Esso paid considerably more, according to Clive Wright, who was the director of corporate affairs at the time.

The chairman, Norman Foster, attended Malborough Grammar with Harris, and the two were lifelong friends. “When I was there, we were big supporters of Hayek. We gave them a major donation when they wanted to buy the premises at Lord North Street,” Wright recalled.

“I met Ralph quite a lot at a lunch couple of times in the House of Lords. Very interesting man, very lively and in depth, very much a free thinker. The last thing I want to give you is an impression of anything improper.”

He went on to add: “We had a very strict policy that we did not get involved politically… of course we are free market company, so naturally we believe in the free market. Yes, we didn’t like state control, particularly in something as sensitive as oil.”

The IEA, at the height of its influence and long before climate change was an issue, was bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco as both industries fought regulation and taxation.

---

desmog 11 22

conservative donor Michael Hintze has resigned from the IEA – an influential free-market think tank criticised for inspiring Liz Truss’s ill-fated economic policies – days after joining the House of Lords.

The Australian hedge fund manager, who has donated millions of pounds to the Conservative party over the years, resigned as a trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs after a 17-year stin

Liz Truss's think tank allies said mini-budget was 'fantastic'

https://www.opendemocracy.net › liz-truss-kwasi-kwart...

Sep 29, 2022 — Truss's think tank backers said her mini-budget would get the economy ... None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IE

when the UK’s new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a raft of tax cuts for high earners last week in his mini-budget, the response from the markets was damning. The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation, and the cost of government borrowing jumped sharply.

But the announcements were cheered on by a group of secretive think tanks closely connected to Liz Truss and her advisers. After years of lobbying, a Conservative government had finally adopted their proposals to scrap the top rate of income tax, remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shelve a planned rise in corporation tax, and pledge a fresh crackdown on unions.

The Adam Smith Institute, where Truss’s political secretary Sophie Jarvis was head of government affairs, said the plans were “a welcome first step to getting the British economy back on track”.

The mood was particularly buoyant at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose director general Mark Littlewood greeted the announcement by claiming: “This isn’t a trickle-down budget – it’s a boost-up budget."

truss and Kwarteng have faced accusations that their proposals are inspired by ‘trickle-down economics’, a term for a set of policies adopted by the former US president Ronald Reagan that cut taxes for the richest in the belief that wealth would then filter down to the poorest. The theory has been discredited by both the International Monetary Fund and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IEA has received donations from BP and ExxonMobil and, along with the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, the tobacco industry. The IEA and the Adam Smith Institute have also received millions of dollars from US funders of climate denial.

Later, speaking at a post-budget briefing, Littlewood was asked by journalists if he was anxious about his policies being put to the test.

“We don't write policy ideas just for them to sit on the shelf – we write them in the hope that one day they're enacted,” he said. But he also admitted that: “If it turns out that these don’t work, I think the IEA has got a lot of hard thinking to do.”

Tim Montgomerie, a former adviser to Boris Johnson, wrote on Twitter that the budget was a “massive moment for the IEA”. “They’ve been advocating these policies for years,” he said. “They incubated Truss and Kwarteng during their early years as MPs. Britain is now their laboratory.”

Truss is particularly close to the IEA, having founded its parliamentary wing FREER in 2011 and hired its former communications director Ruth Porter to run her campaign, later rewarding her by making her deputy chief of staff.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, which once shared a Westminster office with the IEA, predicted that the budget would boost economic output by £99bn over the next ten years and said it was the “most taxpayer-friendly budget in recent memory.”

The economic projections were produced in collaboration with another think tank, Europe Economics. Andrew Lilco, the organisation’s executive director, was later asked to respond to criticism that the budget would benefit the rich more than the poor in an interview on Sky News. 

“I have no interest in equality. I think it’s an incorrect policy objective. I don’t think it’s morally or economically sound as a policy objective,” he said.

The Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank co-founded by former Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher, also claimed credit for many of the policies announced in Kwarteng’s budget.

Tom Clougherty, its ‘head of tax’, said on theIEA’s podcast earlier this week that: “I think that frankly both the overall message and the specific announcements contained within [the mini-budget] are fantastic. Exactly what we would have hoped for and what people like us have been calling for for a long time.”

The reaction from the markets and financial institutions has been in stark contrast to the celebratory rhetoric from Truss’s allies.

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund issued a stinging rebuke of the government’s tax cuts and called on the prime minister to reconsider them to prevent increasing inequality.

The United Nations fund, which monitors the international monetary system to identify risks and recommend economic policies, said the budget could undermine efforts to tackle already rampant inflation.

With turmoil continuing since Friday, the Bank of England was forced to step in to calm the markets. The same day, the bank announced it would buy £65bn of government bonds over the next fortnight as fears grew that pension funds could be affected.

The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney later accused the government of “undercutting” financial institutions and said its tax-cutting measures were “working at some cross-purposes” with the bank.

Speculation that the central bank will now increase interest rates to nearly 6% has prompted nearly 300 mortgage deals to be pulled by lenders. Millions of existing mortgage holders could now also face huge hikes to their monthly repayments.

==

ref 2 desmog

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era

lord Lawsonstepped to the curb hailing a taxi. We had both been at an event in a swish Fleet Street hotel discussing illegal phone hacking by journalists. I had followed him out onto the pavement and asked whether thehacking of scientists' emails from the servers of the British university had been unethical — as well as criminal. “It was a whistleblower,” he scowled. The black taxi took off, leaving me in a cloud of diesel.

Another Lord, though of a different stripe, Lord Monckton, I have met many times. The one that comes to mind is when he was the star turn during a fringe event of climate deniers near the Vatican in April 2015. I began by asking whether he, as a Catholic, believed the Pope could in fact be fallible when pronouncing climate change the challenge of our age. Before I knew where we were, the faux peer was accusing Barack Obama of being the centre of a global Communist-Fascist conspiracy.

Dr S Fred Singer I interviewed at a Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas, the United States, back in 2014. He spoke quietly and softly, explaining his role in recruiting Lawson, the former British chancellor, to the climate denial cause. This mattered because Singer is the grandfather of the denial of climate science, and has been associated with both tobacco and oil companies.

These three men were influential in turning Climategate into an international scandal 10 years ago now.

Creating a storm

The illegal hacking of thousands of private emails between climate scientists, both at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere, and their publication in November 2009 was supposed to be the smoking gun which proved that hundreds of highly respected, indentured university scientists working around the world had conspired together to exaggerate the risks from climate breakdown.

The target of the hack attack had been Pennsylvania State University Professor Michael Mann, the author of the first ‘Hockey Stick’ graphwhich showed a dramatic uptick in average global temperatures following hundreds of years of a fairly stable climate. Professor Phil Jones was collateral damage: accused of academic dishonesty, hauled in front of a powerful Parliamentary committee to answer these trumped up charges, his life’s work unfairly called into question. He considered suicide.

Climategate should have been a storm in a teacup. The emails revealed nothing new. A few choice phrases were taken out of context, twisted, and presented as damning evidence. It was Lord Lawson who turned it into a crisis for climate science.

He launched the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in Parliament just in time to make best use of the faux scandal, toured the newspaper offices using his reputation as Thatcher’s one time chancellor to persuade editors to take the event seriously, and called on his Tory friends to open their cheque-books to fund his opaque think tank.

The GWPF scored some initial successes. Lawson is said to have persuaded his former friend, Lionel Barber, until recently the editor of the Financial Times, to take the Climategate fiasco seriously. This in turn likely influenced the Guardian in its decision to run day after day of coverage of the hacked emails, and its reporters’ fruitless attempt to find the hacker.

Lawson was also influential in the decision of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons to launch its investigation — trapping Professor Jones under the cameras and the hot lights to answer evidently preposterous allegations. Lawson, even during a hearing which he had been influential in being opened, refused to say who was funding his new thinktank.

Manufacturing denial

Alongside Lawson, Singer and Monckton were also there from the very beginning and had significant roles to play in the development of the GWPF.

Singer was among the first climate deniers in the world, indeed when he entered the fray most climate scientists were aware of the complexity and contingency in the research. It was firmly established that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused heating, and that the amount pumped out through the use of fossil fuels was inextricably rising. But issues like the sensitivity of the atmosphere to change and how quickly this would change was still hotly debated.

Singer worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now Atlas Network) in the United States. The foundation was primarily concerned with promoting free market, neoliberal economics. Friedrich von Hayek was the intellectual inspiration. He argued that any regulation would distort the market, leading to hardship.

This ideology was very much in the ascendancy around the world: Lord Lawson has been its “chief architect” in the UK and as chancellor had torn apart the regime of financial regulations. But as well as causing economic collapse in many of the economies where it was tested, neoliberalism now faced the challenge posed by climate science — which would inevitably lead to calls to stop (or regulate, or tax) fossil fuel use.

[pix clatham hse]

The Atlas Foundation turned to Singer for help. The physicist had previously worked with the tobacco industry deliberately creating smoke and mirrors around the increasing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. The foundation received money from the oil industry, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, and was instrumental in founding the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in the UK. It was a trustee of the IEA — David Henderson — who first approached Lord Lawson at an event hosted by the London School of Economics and persuaded him to take up the cause of climate denial.

Lord Monckton also had a part to play. A viscount, Monckton was born into money, but despite his rather eccentric denials, actually missed out on becoming a member of the House of Lords when hereditary peers were abolished. The viscount worked for a very short period for Thatcher’s policy unit. He later lost £1m in prize money when he launched a puzzle betting no-one could crack it. They could.

Monckton became something of a hero to the climate denier community when he published a two-page rant in the Sunday Telegraph claiming that he alone had exposed the fatal flaw of the science of climate change. The rather eccentric ramblings had originally been drafted as a report for a private investor (with an historic interest in**fracking**).He was also instrumental in formulating talking points from the Climategate scandal for climate science deniers across the world.

[pix congress?!]

Monckton — if you believe his side of the story — advised Lawson to establish the GWPF and take up his new climate denier cause — attacking science rather than policy. He also claimed to have recommended Dr Benny Peiser — who wrote his dissertation on whether people are more athletically active in the summer — as the head of the charity. Peiser denied this version of events, desperate to distance Lawson and the think tank from the discredited and conspiracy-prone Monckton.

Political game

Lawson once boasted that he was responsible for what he (modestly) called Lawson’s Law: he advised the Tory party not to fight elections based on what the electorate actually cared about, but instead to persuade the electorate to care about what the Tory party could win an election on.

Lawson did not advise fake news, but it encouraged a distortion of reality that has seriously undermined our politics. It opened the floodgates.

Along the way, the GWPF has gotten into bed with the wildest of right-wing neoliberal think tanks, becoming intimately entwined with those responsible for serious spin and corporate lobbying around Brexit.

Lawson himself was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign (before applying for residency in France). He was happy to appeal to reactionary populism to settle scores within the Tory party.

One consequence of this is that Nigel Farage long ago adopted the tactics of his namesake. Farage has dabbled in climate denial. He has gone further in stirring up populism. He is the master of scapegoating. And he is forever throwing “dead cats” into the political arena, keeping us constantly focused on our relationship with the EU. And in doing so, his Brexit Party — a party riddled with a Lawsonian brand of climate science denial — came close to destroying Lawson’s Tory party while continuing to push the UK towards the hardest of Brexits.

Moving on

Lawson, Monckton, and Singer have all quietly fallen off the radar. But their legacy, honed through the manufactured scandal of Climategate, lives on.

Lawson made himself chairman of the GWPF for life, but age has — with the same inevitability as climate breakdown — taken its toll and he has retired from climate politics to hisbeautiful mansion in the south of France. The GWPF lost the argument. It is now ineffective, losing support, and should soon be defunct. Singer has long retired from his think tank. Monckton is still attacking the Pope, but to no effect.

From climate denial and the fakest of fake news, to corporate lobbying and media spin — you reap what you sow.

==

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/thinktank-climate-science-institute-economic-affairs

Revealed: top UK thinktank spent decades undermining climate science

Institute of Economic Affairs has links to 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet

How vested interests tried to turn the world against climate science

David Pegg and Rob Evans

Thu 10 Oct 2019 11.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019 12.42 EDT

The UK’s most influential conservative thinktank has published at least four books, as well as multiple articles and papers, over two decades suggesting manmade climate change may be uncertain or exaggerated.

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has issued publications arguing climate change is either not significantly driven by human activity or will be positive. The group is one of the most politically influential thinktanks in the UK, andboasts that 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet, including the home secretary, foreign secretary and chancellor, have been associated with the group’s past and current initiatives.

Despite a longstanding international consensus among climatologists that human activity is accelerating climate change, the IEA’s publications throughout the 1990s and 2000s heavily suggested climate science was unreliable or exaggerated. In recent years the group has focused more on free-market solutions to reducing carbon emissions.

The IEA said it did not take a corporate position on any policy matter. It said the majority of the publications identified by the Guardian predated most of its current staff.

Its first book on climate science was published in 1994. Referring to a “so-called scientific ‘consensus’” on global heating, its foreword suggested the public had been “taken in” by media coverage of climate change and that investing resources in studying the subject was wasteful.

“An alternative course of action would be to expose the shoddiness of the apocalyptic predictions,” the foreword continued. “Unfortunately, governments cannot be expected to undertake this task. Hence it is left to private individuals and institutions to try to breach the barriers to the dissemination of good news … this IEA study is one such attempt.”

The book was also the first of several IEA publications to suggest that increased atmospheric CO2 would be beneficial, because it would result in “increased crop yields and reduced water requirements of plants”.

Three years later the group published a book of essays called Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom that described climate scientists as having established a “false consensus”.

“Estimates by some of the world’s most respected climate scientists suggest that even if a warming of 2 degrees centigrade does occur the impact on humankind will not be catastrophic,” the group said. “Indeed agricultural productivity is likely to increase in many parts of the world, due to longer growing seasons and increases in uptake of CO2.”

The scientific consensus suggests the likely impacts of global heating will in fact be overwhelmingly detrimental to agriculture, largely because of the increased frequency of extreme weather events.

The group has also hosted a series of shorter papers, articles and blogs questioning climate science, including an article celebrating “20 years denouncing the eco-militants” in 2013, and blogposts recycling allegations of academic fraud against climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that were subsequently disproven.

Announcing its 2007 paper Global Warming False Alarms, the group said “the high salience of the climate change issue reflects the fact that manyspecial interests have much to gain from policies designed to reduce emissions through increased government intervention and_{ world energy planning”.}_

In recent years, however, the group’s publications have increasingly focused on free-market solutions to decarbonisation rather than disputing climate science. It told the Guardian it had recently published a paper discussing the pros and cons of a carbon tax.

As a registered educational charity, the IEA is entitled to various tax breaks. However the group has previously faced controversy over the political nature of its work, which principally involves campaigning for free-market policies.

Last year the Charity Commission issued the group with a formal warning over its failure to be balanced and neutral in a report on Brexit. The warning was later withdrawn and the report has since been edited and republished.

It has also been criticised for its policy of refusing to identify its donors, which it says would breach their privacy and expose them to harassment. However it is known to have previously received funding from the oil corporations BP and ExxonMobil.

After revealing to an undercover reporter from Unearthed that the group had regularly received money from BP, the IEA volunteered that it had accepted donations from the company every year since 1967.

Historical accounts state it also received £21,000 from ExxonMobil of the US to fund a grant for a researcher in 2005.

A spokesperson for the IEA said: “The Institute of Economic Affairs does not hold any corporate positions on policy. All views belong to the authors who publish with us, or speakers who take part in our events.

“The majority of the Guardian’s list of IEA publications on climate change predate almost all staff who currently work at the organisation, and has failed to include our most recent output on the topic, including a paper which discusses the merits of a carbon tax, and a panel discussion on achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

The IEA declined to comment on what proportion of its funding was drawn from entities with an interest in fossil fuels, but said donors and their interests had no influence over its publications.

“The institute’s editorial and policy output – in both our reports and our educational material – is decided by its research team and academic advisory council only. Any funding we receive does not, under any circumstances, influence the focus or conclusions of our research,” it said.

The IEA complained the Guardian had been unfairly selective in its examination of its climate publications. However, when invited to identify any other publications presenting an alternative position, it referred to its original statement.

Topics

The polluters

Environment

The polluters

Thinktanks

Boris Johnson

Climate change (Environment)

Climate change (Science)

Oil (Business)

Oil and gas companies

==

==

https://www.desmog.co.uk/institute-economic-affairs

TheInstitute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a London-based free-market think-tank and “educational charity” founded in 1955 by the late Sir Antony Fisherand Lord Harris with the mission “to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.”[1]

According to an archived 2010 version of their website, “Since 1974 the IEA has played an active role in developing similar institutions across the globe. Today there exists a world-wide network of over one hundred institutions in nearly eighty countries. All are independent but share in the IEA's mission.”[2]

IEA became very influential in the UK, and Nobel economist Milton Friedman believed its influence was so strong that “the U-turn in British policy executed by Margaret Thatcher owes more to him (i.e., Fisher) than any other individual.” [3]

The IEA is a member of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a Washington-based umbrella organization supporting over 450 “free market” groups around the world. Both the IEA and Atlas were founded byAnthony Fisher. Fisher's daughter, Linda Whetstone, is Chair of the Atlas Network as well as a director of the IEA. [40], [33]

FREER

On March 19, 2018,IEA introduced the “FREER” program, directed by Rebecca Lowe. [23]

“FREER will be distinctive in its embrace of both social and economic liberalism: we have a packed range of upcoming events and papers on topics ranging from no-platforming to Blockchain. We also have a great group of Conservative MPs signed up as parliamentary supporters, and we have Liz Truss and James Forsyth giving speeches at the launch tonight,” Lowe wrote in an article introducing FEER atConservativeHome.

According to its website, “FREER will refocus the political debate, shifting attention towards free enterprise and social freedom. Britain’s upcoming departure from the EU provides a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to reassess and reform our country across the whole range of policy areas. The ideas we will champion are those that coalesce around an enduring agenda of unleashing the enterprise, imagination, and inspiration of individual men and women. We are energetic and hopeful for a country that is open, dynamic, enterprising, and thriving.” [24]

For its first year, FREER would “avoid enormous overhead costs by being run administratively through the IEA” and would “benefit from the IEA’s staff’s expertise and experience in different areas” while being separate within IEA's overall budget. [24]

Stance on Climate Change

May 3, 2019

In an article for City A.M. criticising recent “Extinction Rebellion” climate protests, entitled “Of course we must protect the planet, but not by taking Britain back to the dark ages,” the IEA's associate director, Kate Andrews, wrote: [27]

“Making this planet greener and cleaner is a goal shared by people across the political spectrum.”

Andrews called fracking a “successful intermediary between extremely dirty fuel and the greener energy revolution to come,” claiming that shale gas “extracted from our shores produces half the pre-combustion emissions as the gas which we import.”

She also claimed: “currently to extract the same amount of energy you’d get from one shale gas well, you’d need 750 times the amount of land for onshore wind.” [27]

November 17, 2004

According to an IER publication by Robert L. Bradley Jr. entitled “Climate Alarmism Reconsidered”:

“Government intervention in the name of energy sustainability is the major threat to real energy sustainability and the provision of affordable, reliable energy to growing economies worldwide. Free-market structures and the wealth generated by markets help communities to best adapt to climate change.” [5]

December 1, 1997

An IEA report entitled “Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom” said: [28]

“The world’s climate is in constant flux: on time-scales from days to millennia, global and regional temperature, wind and rainfall patterns are changing. Over periods of decades and centuries, the most significant factor affecting climate appears to be changes in the output of the sun.”

“IPCC [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] lead authors have exaggerated the likely impacts of climate change in order to heighten public perception of the issue and thereby encourage governments to spend more on climate research.” [28]

Funding

The IEA is an educational charity (No CC 235 351) and “independent research institute limited by guarantee.” According to their website, “The Institute is entirely independent of any political party or group, and is entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals, companies and foundations who want to support its work, plus income from book sales and conferences. It does no contract work and accepts no money from government.” [1]

The IEA was revealed to have received funding from oil giant BP in a 2018 undercover investigation by *Unearthed*. IEA director Mark Littlewood told an undercover reporter that the oil company uses access facilitated by the think tank to press ministers on issues ranging from environmental and safety standards to British tax rates. [29]

According to the IEA website, the “American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs” is an incorporated 501(C)(3) charity that allows those in the United States to show their support for IEA. It operates under EIN#54-1899539. [6]

The following is based on data the Conservative Transparency project collected from publicly-available tax forms on the Institute of Economic Affairs as well as American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Note that not all individual values have been verified by DeSmog. [7], [8]

See the attached spreadsheet for details on theInstitute of Economic Affairs's funding by year (.xlsx).

DonorAmerican Friends of the Institute of Economic AffairsInstitute of Economic AffairsGrand Total
Earhart Foundation$1,074,952$1,074,952
John Templeton Foundation$200$752,699$752,899
DonorsTrust$284,900$284,900
Pierre F. and Enid Goodrich Foundation$270,000$270,000
Chase Foundation of Virginia$185,140$185,140
Lovett and Ruth Peters Foundation$99,000$99,000
Exxon Mobil$50,000$50,000
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation$22,400$22,400
The Roe Foundation$20,000$20,000
Aequus Institute$10,000$10,000
Atlas Economic Research Foundation$7,500$7,500
Schwab Charitable Fund$1,500$1,500
Grand Total$638,240$2,140,051$2,778,291

ExxonMobil Funding

Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets confirms that the American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs has received at least $50,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. [9]

[docs]

People

Staff (2015)

As of November, 2015, the following people were listed on the IEA website: [10]

Trustees (2015) [10]

Past Staff (2012)

The following additional staff members were also listed on the IEA website as of November, 2012: [11]

Fellows (2015)

As of November, 2015, Fellows and Honorary Fellows listed on the IEA website included the following: [12]

Honorary Fellows (2015) [12]

Past Fellows (2012)

The following additional Fellows were listed on the IEA website as of November, 2012.[13]

Past Honorary Fellows (2012) [13]

Advisory Council (2015)

As of November, 2015: [12]

Past Advisory Council Members (2012)

Additional Advisory Council members, as of November 2012, included: [13]

Actions

August 20, 2019

IEA Associate Director, Kate Andrews, appeared on Sky News during a discussion on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's concern about climate change while using private jets. She wrongly claimed they had been “preaching to everyone else that they needed to have fewer children and that they needed to be extremely cautious about their carbon output”. [51]

July 3, 2019

The IEA's Digital Manager, Darren Grimes, wrote an article for the online magazine Spiked, criticising the recent adoption of a “net zero” emissions by the UK. Grimes said that the target was “ almost certain to impose huge costs on the poorest households and have a detrimental impact on our living standards”. While accepting that there is “certainly a need to take action against climate change”, he claimed that the “Net Zero target won’t do anything to reduce emissions from the US, China and India”, calling it “green virtue-signalling”. [50]

In 2018, DeSmog revealed that Spiked had received $300,000 from the US-based climate science denial funders, the Koch brothers, over the previous three years.

June 25, 2019

The IEA's Head of Lifestyle Economics, Christopher Snowdon, wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph in which he said that the UK's “net zero” emissions target could “most charitably be described as a leap of faith” and that the amendment was only proposed to “boost the ego of one of Britain’s worst prime ministers”. Snowdon admitted that there were “certainly benefits to be had from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels” but claimed Britain was only responsible for 1% of global emissions so “any benefits to the climate depend almost entirely on the big economies – China, India, the USA – following our lead”. [39]

June 13, 2019

The IEA hosted a podcast with former Labour MP Natascha Engel on the issue of fracking in the UK, during which she “argues that an urge to ‘do something’ about climate change will hustle politicians into bad decisions — and almost certainly make things worse,” according to the podcast description. Engel served as the government's Commissioner for Shale Gas between October 2018 and April 2019 and was criticized for working as a consultant for the chemicals and fracking company INEOS after losing her North East Derbyshire seat in 2017. [35], [37]

The podcast was hosted by the IEA's Digital Manager, Darren Grimes, a pro-Brexit student activist who founded the youth campaign group BeLeave and was subsequently fined £20,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaching spending rules during the EU referendum campaign. In July, Grimes won an appeal against the fine. [36], [48]

June 7, 2019

IEA director-general Mark Littlewood appeared on BBC Radio 4, responding to a letter sent by Chancellor Philip Hammond to the Prime Minister, claiming a “net zero” emissions target by 2050 would cost the UK $1 trillion. Littlewood said: [31]

“You can do quite a lot with a trillion pounds. Let's even say the treasury has exaggerated it and it's only half a trillion pounds. You can do an awful lot with half a trillion pounds… Now that's not say there aren't any fringe benefits if you're in the windmill-making business: this could be good news for you. But it is a real cost. You can't just hand wave that away.” [31]

June 5, 2019

Linda Edwards, a member of the IEA's advisory council since 2016, was appointed a director of the organization, according to *Companies House*filings. The IEA website states that Edwards has had a “long relationship” with the Koch-funded, climate science denying Cato Institute, based in the US, and is a board member of the Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organization supporting over 450 “free market” groups around the world. Both the Atlas Network and the IEA were founded by the late Sir Anthony Fisher. [32], [33]

Edwards also supports the Reason Foundation, another Koch- and Exxon-funded US libertarian group which claimed in 2016 that “global warming of up to 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could generate net benefits for humanity.” [33], [34]

June 3, 2019

IEA director-general Mark Littlewood wrote an article in The Times entitled “Green campaigners won’t save the planet, but capitalism may well do.” [38]

May 3, 2019

IEA associate director Kate Andrews wrote an article for City A.M. criticising recent “Extinction Rebellion” climate protests, entitled “Of course we must protect the planet, but not by taking Britain back to the dark ages.” [27]

Andrews acknowledged that “Making this planet greener and cleaner is a goal shared by people across the political spectrum” but said protesters were “campaigning for behaviour that would quite literally send us back to the dark ages.”

Andrews called fracking a “successful intermediary between extremely dirty fuel and the greener energy revolution to come,” claiming that shale gas “extracted from our shores produces half the pre-combustion emissions as the gas which we import.”

She also claimed: “currently to extract the same amount of energy you’d get from one shale gas well, you’d need 750 times the amount of land for onshore wind.” [27]

November 28, 2018

An *openDemocracy* article reported that the IEA's magazine, Economic Affairs, which is distributed to every school in the UK teaching A-Level economics or business studies, had published articles promoting “tobacco tax cuts, climate change denial, tax havens, and privatising the NHS.” [30]

In autumn 2013, the magazine ran an article by Roger Bate, an economist and fellow at the libertarian US-based think tank the American Enterprise Institute, entitled “20 years denouncing eco-militants”, in which he argued that “evidence of climate impact is still hard to prove, and harm even more difficult to establish.”

The magazine does not disclose its funding sources to readers. [30]

September 24, 2018

The IEA helped to launch an 'alternative' plan for a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, alongside US group the Cato Institute. It called on the UK government to cut EU environmental regulations to secure free-trade deals with the US, China and India after Brexit. Environmental NGOs said the plans were not credible if the UK was to fulfil its own environmental commitments, warning that the Brexit vote was not a mandate to lower standards. BBC Newsnight Policy Editor Chris Cook wrote an analysis piece challenging the report's “dubious maths​”. [43], [44]

The following day Greenpeace's Unearthed revealed details of a 'lucrative' tour of the US undertaken by IEA chief Mark Littlewood in advance of the report being published. [45]

A separate *Guardian* analysisrevealed a related US-group, the American Friends of the IEA, had raised at least $1.69m in the last decade. The director of the American Friends of the IEA, Robert Boyd, revealed some of the money had been used to fund specific projects for the IEA, but said the US-arm was run independently of the UK thinktank. [46]

August, 2018

Continuing the revolving door betwen Tufton Street organisations and key Brexit departments in government, IEA Director of Communications Stephanie Lis took a post as a Special Adviser at the Department for Exiting the EU under Secretary of State Dominic Raab. [47]

July 2018

IEA chief Mark Littlewood was filmed by undercover reporters tellling a prospective donor they could discreetly influence a report in ways that could advance their business interests, in exchange for £42,500. [49]

July 29, 2018

An undercover reporterfilmed Institute of Economic Affairs director Mark Littlewood offering access to government ministers and civil servants in exchange for funding, The Guardian reported.  Littlewood said IEA was in the “the Brexit influencing game.” He said he could make introductions to ministers, and that IEA knew Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis and Liam Fox well.[25]

He was also recorded suggesting donors could shape “substantial content” of research commissioned by IEA with findings that would support free-trade deals. [25]

“The disclosures are likely to raise fresh questions about the independence and status of the IEA, which is established as an educational charity. Charity Commission rules state that 'an organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political',” The Guardian reported. [25]

In an exchange with The Guardian, IEA said there was “nothing untoward about thinktanks having a collaborative approach with politicians” and added that it had “no corporate view” on Brexit. [25]

The IEA also offered to broker access to senior politicians for foreign donors seeking to influence the course of Brexit, according to the investigation by Greenpeace's UnEarthed. [26]

April 28, 2016

The IEA published a report calling for the BBC to be privatised. One of its chapters, entitled “The problem of bias in the BBC” was written by Ryan Bourne, now Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the US-based libertarian Cato Institute. Fresh analysis for the chapter was commissioned from the anti-BBC research group News-watch, which regularly publishes articles rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. Both the IEA and News-watch are either directly or indirectly funded by the Nigel Vinson Charitable Trust. [41], [42]

June, 2015

Philip Booth, Editorial and Programme Director at the IEA, was featured on *Newsnight*where he criticized some aspects ofPope Francis's encyclical on the environment. [14]

According to the event description, “Pope Francis's comments on how best to combat climate change however, are at risk of overstepping the mark when it comes to the role of the clergy.” [14]

Phillip Booth also wrote a corresponding blog post at the IEA titled “Property rights and the environment - a response to Pope Francis’ encyclical.” [15]

“It is correct to say that pollution leads to premature deaths. Indeed, many would argue that climate change will do so and some that it already does so. But, there are trade-offs. And the underlying picture is one of huge increases in life expectancy and health because of the economic development that is taking place. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the environment is improving dramatically,” Booth writes.

September 20, 2013

IEA Director General Mark Littlewood gave aspeech to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)'s annual conference, in which he said: [52]

“I also think there are whole government departments that can be closed down. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport? Culture, Media and Sport should belong to the people, not the state bureaucracy. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills - surely, the three things governments are worst at. That department can be abolished overnight.”

He added:

“We need to reverse the disastrous energy policies which make heating bills a huge burden on the average household. In the name of combatting global warming, we actually risk people being unable to heat their homes and dying of hypothermia.”

Littlewood said later in the speech:

“I've heard your leader Nigel Farage describe the other three major parties as being the social democratic parties. I think he may have a point.”

He ended by saying:

“My real plea to you today is to focus on the third word in your party's name. If you can become the true party of independence, talking not just about the UK's independence from Europe, but about the need to fight for the independence of ordinary people against an over-taxing, over-spending, over-regulating state, then I think you can make an even greater contribution to modern political debate.” [52]

June, 2013

The Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute “received tens of thousands of pounds in funding from cigarette firms,” which was revealed in The Observer's article, “Health groups dismayed by news 'big tobacco' funded rightwing thinktanks.” [16],[17]

British American Tobacco (BAT) confirmed in The Observer's article that in 2011 BAT “gave the IEA [Institute of Economic Affairs] £10,000, plus £1,000 in event sponsorship. Last year [2012] it [BAT] donated a further £20,000 to the institute.” [17]

September 5, 2011

The Institute of Economic Affairs hosted an event by climate change skeptic Fred Singer titled “The Big Global Warming Debate: Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate.”

According to the conference description, “If climate change is natural, if there is no appreciable Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), then there is little we can do about it. We'd better just adapt – as humans have been doing for many millennia.” [18]

November 23, 2009

The Institute of Economic Affairs held an event titled “The Copenhagen Summit: Do Science and Economics Support Government Action on Climate Change?”

Speakers included climate change skeptics Nigel Lawson and Fred Singer. The conference description suggests that policies to reduce carbon emissions will cause consumers to “face higher bills as businesses pass on the additional costs.” [19]

September, 2009

The Institute of Economic Affairs created a document titled “Climate Change Policy: Challenging the Activists.” The report includes sections written by numerous climate change skeptics.[20]

Here are some excerpts from the report:

Ian Byatt:

“[T]he Stern Review […] exaggerates the costs that may be associated with emissions of greenhouse gases”

Russell Lewis:

“It is possible to accept aspects of the science of global warming without predicting a forthcoming apocalypse or highly coercive and centralising government action to deal with the consequences. […] the consequences of environmental and ecological change are regularly exaggerated.”

**Julian Morris**:

“The science of climate change is far from settled. Arguably, it will never be settled.”

“I have argued that the relationship between human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and global warming remains uncertain. Plausibly, increased emissions of GHGs during the 21st century will lead to mild warming – of perhaps 1–3° Celsius. To the extent that this warming occurs gradually, the best strategy is likely to be adaptation.”

David Henderson:

“[T]he IPCC process, viewed as a whole, is not professionally up to the mark.”

“[Governments] should no longer presume or aim at consensus. Rather, they should see to it that, both within the IPCC reporting process and more broadly, serious differences of professional opinion are aired.”

Alan Peacock:

“Critics of the conventional view that science ‘proves’ that, given present policies, damaging global warming will occur as a consequence of human actions frequently warn that this view is leading towards adoption of a new secular religion, of a pronounced ascetic character. […] [S]upporters of the damaging climate change hypothesis fervently advocate stringent government measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which would have a serious impact on individual freedom.

“[W]e should be wary of the dangers to individual freedom inherent in the present consensus about prospective climate change and how to deal with it.”

Colin Robinson:

“In general, the authors of this volume take a far more sceptical view than is usual of the hypothesis that drastic action to combat severe climate change can be justified.”

March 6, 2007

The Institute of Economic Affair's Russell Lewis published a report titled, “Global Warming False Alarms,” which constituted the “25th IEA Current Controversies Paper.” [21]

The report states that “claims about the future impact of global warming are alarmist and unwarranted,” and “also suspect as an excuse for mounting taxes and controls.” [21] The IEA's report goes on to say that “there is a strong case that the IPCC has overstated the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on the climate and downplayed the influence of natural factors such as variations in solar output, El Niños and volcanic activity. The empirical evidence used to support the global warming hypothesis has often been misleading, with ‘scare stories’ promoted in the media that are distortions of scientific reality.” [21]

Publications

The Institute of Economic Affairs has issued a number of publications that challenge the science behind man-made climate change. These include:

Institute of Economic Affairs Contact & Location

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IER) lists the following contact information on its website: [22]

Institute of Economic Affairs

2 Lord North Street (entrance on Great Peter Street)

Westminster

London

SW1P 3LB

Tel: 020 7799 8900

Related Organizations

Resources

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/08/27/how-dark-money-overseas-flows-boris-johnson-s-government

With Boris Johnson sauntering into Downing Street having recrafted his own script from guffawing jester to grave populist, swathes of right-wing lobbyists have stealthed their way from the fringes of Westminster to the heart of government.

We know this, because we've been watching this slow erosion of democracy for years. In the time since the Brexit referendum, we and others have sought to uncover the connections of those now in the cabinet –  the money and friendly relationships behind the big changes taking place in Britain.

A cursory glance at how their multitudinous ties overlap reveals a network of dark money, shady think tanks and overseas influence that now runs right through Whitehall. Cohesive strategies or motivations are hard to pin down, but the one binding factor between them is a foreign-influenced deregulatory agenda frequently couched within the rhetoric of national freedom and liberty.

While the links between Brexit interests and big business are extensive, much of this money and influence seems to pour throughMatthew Elliott, the former Vote Leave chief exec who now finds himself holding the government's purse strings. The Elliott example illustrates how power often stretches far out of public view.

lil sus map]

Vote Leave in the cabinet

The most prominent of the incomers, thanks in part to his dramatisation by Benedict Cumberbatch earlier this year, is Johnson’s new chief of staff Dominic Cummings. His frequently-referenced libertarian ‘anarchic’ proclivities have gifted him a semi-mythic status as an enticing new Whitehall villain.

But perhaps more instructive in terms of understanding the path of this new government are those arrivals via thinktanks and pressure groups whose special interests lie in limiting the role of the same government they are now part of.

Desmog has detailed how several of the new Johnson cabinet are now being advised by ex-staff from what’s known as the Tufton Street network – a group of organisations linked through their use of the same building in Westminster, and ideologically aligned through their lobbying on behalf of business interests.

One notable member of the Tufton Street network is the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a low-tax, anti-regulation pressure group whose campaigning work has provided a training ground for many of those now in government.

The Taxpayer’s Alliance was founded in 2004 by Matthew Elliot, a man who was Cummings’ ex-boss on the Vote Leave campaign and has played a part in a slew of right-wing projects over the past decade, and who is now Sajid Javid’s advisor at the Treasury.

Elliott finds other ex-colleagues now in government too, including the Taxpayers' Alliance’s former campaign manager Chloe Westley who is now Digital Advisor at Number 10, alongside many others from Vote Leave.

Trump towering

Through another of Elliott’s affiliates, Shanker Singham, there are links to the same deregulatory agenda which has swept through the US since Donald Trump came to power in 2016.

An investigation last year by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative unit, revealed how Singham, via the prominent right-wing think thank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was willing to offer US agribusiness lobbyists access to prominent British politicians whilst also authoring research on their behalf. The IEA, it is distinctly unshocking to find, is funded by BP and the tobacco industry.

Start chipping away at the glossy paint and you find that much of the funding for these ‘independent reports’ on trade policy and campaigns for national sovereignty come from hedge funds, big business, and billionaire industrialists like the Koch brothers. Many of these same people are also infamous funders of climate science denial.

Lobbying, industry funding and dark money in politics are nothing new, but the dramatically-shifting terrain being offered by Brexit and a changing global order have opened up space for powerful foreign interests to make significant inroads in just a few years.

Fighting for more sovereignty is all very well, but you should know whose sovereignty it is you’re fighting for.

==

Sceptic Colleagues

Sir Peter Walters was Browne's successor at BP. As boss of the company, he signed off annual donations of £10,000 for his friend Sir Ralph Harris at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and, on retirement, joined the free market think tank as a trustee.

At the time of Brown's Stanford Speech, Walters was working with Julian Morris and Roger Bate, overseeing climate sceptic publications and conferences. Walters also remains convinced that the sun is the driving force behind climate change.

His scepticism of the science reflects his scepticism of Browne's true motive in coming out in support of climate action, pointing to his very close relationship with Blair.

Some of his colleagues at the IEA were incandescent with rage at Browne for breaking ranks and fraternising with their ideological foes.

Sir Peter told me during an interview at the BP headquarters in St James's Street: “If you're chief executive of a major company, you've got to work with the grain of the government. I'm not going to stand up and criticise them because I want something else. I don't have to bend my conscience too far to say what they'll be glad to hear.”

When asked if Browne was using rhetoric to 'greenwash' BP during the Stanford speech, Sir Peter replied: “When I was a soldier we had an expression in the army which was, ‘bullshit baffles brains’.

“Before the commanding general came to inspect, everything would be whitewashed and cleaned. I don't think the general ever knew about the standard of training or the combat readiness of the troops and all the rest,” he recalled, mimicking a British general: “What! What! What!”

Richard Ritche, also a lifelong supporter of the IEA, was a political advisor to Browne at BP at the time of the speech. He agrees that the chief executive's conversion to environmentalism was about expediency and public relations, rather than a genuine turn onto the road to Damascus.

Ritchie told me: “I have absolutely no doubt that John Browne wanted to be perceived as the greenest oil company. But when you look at his decisions, he did not allocate all the resources away from oil and gas – we would never in a million years.”

BP Withdraws

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, BP announced that it would be withdrawing from the Global Climate Coalition.

TTWATCH

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a London-based, influential, right-wing think tank. It is part of a very wide international network of similar organisations, offering financial, operational and strategic support to a large number of these. Among many other groups, via its founders Antony Fisher, Ralph Harris, and Arthur Seldon, it spawned the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the University of Buckingham, and the International Policy Network, which the IEA appears to fund and run directly. The IEA manages the funding of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies

The IEA enjoyed its highest influence during the right-wing Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher. Milton Friedman believes the IEA's intellectual influence was so strong that "the U-turn in British policy executed by Margaret Thatcher owes more to him (i.e., Fisher) than any other individual."

The IEA describe their mission as being "...to improve public understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society, with particular reference to the role of markets in solving economic and social problems."

The IEA website boasts that the organisation has played a major role in the proliferation of conservative think tanks around the world. "Since 1974 the IEA has played an active role in developing similar institutions across the globe. Today there exists a world-wide network of over one hundred institutions in nearly eighty countries. All are independent but share in the IEA's mission," its website states.

http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/institute-of-economic-affairs.html

==

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a London-based, influential, right-wing think tank. It is part of a very wide international network of similar organisations, offering financial, operational and strategic support to a large number of these. Among many other groups, via its founders Antony Fisher, Ralph Harris, and Arthur Seldon, it spawned the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the University of Buckingham, and the International Policy Network, which the IEA appears to fund and run directly. The IEA manages the funding of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies [2]

The IEA enjoyed its highest influence during the right-wing Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher. Milton Friedman believes the IEA's intellectual influence was so strong that "the U-turn in British policy executed by Margaret Thatcher owes more to him (i.e., Fisher) than any other individual." [3]

The IEA describe their mission as being "...to improve public understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society, with particular reference to the role of markets in solving economic and social problems."

Contents [hide]

History

In 1945 Antony Fisher went to the London School of Economics to see F. A. Hayek. Fisher shared Hayek's belief in the dangers growing government power presented for the future. He was determined to embark on a political and parliamentary career in order to shift discussion and policy away from the prevailing consensus on planning and Keynesian economics. Hayek dissuaded Fisher from politics by arguing that the decisive influence in the battle of ideas rested with intellectuals, and hence, the way forward would be to establish a body which could engage in research and influence 'intellectual' opinion in order to win over the opinion of those in the universities, the schools and the media.

Ten years after that initial meeting with Hayek, Fisher was financially in a position to create the research institute they had discussed. Ralph Harris [later appointed Lord Harris] and Arthur Seldon were instrumental in establishing the IEA.

The IEA's goal is to explain free-market ideas to the public, including politicians, students, journalists, businessmen, academics and anyone interested in public policy.

The core belief of free-marketeers is that people should be free to do what they want in life as long as they don't harm anyone else. On the whole, society's problems and challenges are best dealt with by people and companies interacting with each other freely, without interference from politicians and the State. This means that government action, whether through taxes, regulation or laws, should be kept to a minimum. IEA authors and speakers are therefore always on the lookout for ways of reducing the government's role in our lives.

The IEA's main activity is a programme of researching and publishing books (up to 20 a year) and a quarterly journal on various public policy issues. The IEA usually commissions outside authors to do the work, though some is done in-house by IEA staffers. The IEA holds an extensive series of conferences, seminars, lectures and working lunches to discuss its themes (50-80 events a year). There is also a student outreach programme.

The IEA is a registered educational and research charity. As such it is entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals, companies and foundations who want to support its work, plus income from book sales and conferences. It does no contract work, accepts no money from government and is independent of any political party. [from IEA website: http://www.iea.org.uk/]

The IEA website boasts that the organisation has played a major role in the proliferation of conservative think tanks around the world. "Since 1974 the IEA has played an active role in developing similar institutions across the globe. Today there exists a world-wide network of over one hundred institutions in nearly eighty countries. All are independent but share in the IEA's mission," its website states. [4]

Funding

Personnel

Former personnel

Contact information

Institute of Economic Affairs,

2 Lord North Street,

Westminster, London, SW1P 3LB

Phone: 020 7799 8900

Fax: 020 7799 2137

Email: iea AT iea.org.uk

Web: http://www.iea.org.uk

External Articles

References

    1. ↑ "[1]"

Categories:

he Institute of Economic Affairs (IPA) is a conservative, corporate-funded UK think tank. The IEA established an Environmental Unit in 1993 headed by Roger Bate. IEA books, and those by IEA fellows, have included:

forest at the edges tends to increase, not decrease, biological diversity, because it creates diversity of habitat".

Links