Fifth Annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism Awarded Jointly to Tim Harford and Jamie Whyte

New York City – First prize in IPN’s Fifth Annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism was awarded jointly to Tim Harford of the Financial Times (UK) and Jamie Whyte, a freelance writer published in The Times (London), at the awards dinner held on November 1. Each of the co-winners received a cash award of $7,000 and an engraved crystal candlestick – a nod to Bastiat’s ironic ‘Petition to the Candlemakers of Paris’.

Third prize (a cash award of $1,000 and a candlestick) went to Rakesh Wadhwa, a freelance writer whose articles were published in The Himalayan Times (Nepal).

The Bastiat Prize, established by International Policy Network (IPN), celebrates journalists and writers whose published articles explain and promote the institutions of free society, emulating the 19th Century French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat.

“We had more entries than ever this year – over 250 – and they were of an incredibly high calibre,” said IPN’s executive director, Julian Morris. “All three winners were truly evocative of Bastiat: they clearly and eloquently explained complex ideas about the free society. As Tim Harford said in his acceptance speech, in many respects they went “beyond Bastiat” by carefully using data to support their arguments,” he continued.

Previous Bastiat Prize winners include Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Guest of The Economist, Amity Shlaes (then) of the Financial Times, Sauvik Chakraverti of the Economic Times (India) and Brian Carney of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

The Bastiat Prize was first awarded in 2002 and judges have included Lady Thatcher and Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. The international panel of judges comprises many eminent individuals including Lord (Nigel) Lawson, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer; Edward Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute; Lord Kalms of Edgware, founder of Dixons Group plc; Ruth Richardson, former Finance Minister of New Zealand, and the Hon. Douglas Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the Appeals Court of the District of Columbia.

Entries for the Bastiat Prize are judged by intellectual content of each article, the persuasiveness of the language used, the type of publication in which it appeared and the location of the author. The Prize was developed to encourage, recognise and reward writers whose published works elucidate the institutions of the free society, including free trade, property rights, the rule of law, freedom of contract, free speech and limited government.

International Policy Network (IPN) is an independent, non-partisan, non-governmental, educational charity, which seeks to improve public understanding of the role of the institutions of the free society. For more information about IPN and the Bastiat Prize, visit www.policynetwork.net .