HomeAbout Programs

Global Prosperity Initiative

 

While the globe’s most advanced nations develop amazing new technologies, and create ever-increasing amounts of wealth, many continue to languish in poverty. This sad fact raises urgent questions: Why are parts of the world so rich, while others are so poor? What can we do to ensure that everyone, everywhere, has the freedom to prosper? Why have our best attempts to help poor nations failed?

These are the questions of the Mercatus Center Global Prosperity Initiative. Setting aside simple formulas for international development, our scholars seek to address these questions from our unique "institutional choice" perspective, synthesizing the thought of Nobel Laureate economists Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Douglass North, and Vernon Smith. The Global Prosperity Initiative seeks to understand the basic cultural, political, economic, and legal institutions that must be in place to enable people to engage in cooperation for mutual advantage, and to help others apply this understanding to policy.

Global Prosperity Initiative Projects

Crisis and Response in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia is conducting a five-year project following the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast in the wake of the terrible destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. We are focusing our efforts in Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes, Louisiana and Harrison and Hancock Counties, Mississippi to examine how different social, legal, political, and economic institutions engender different types of response and how they may have affected different communities during and after the hurricane. Click here to learn more...

 

Enterprise Africa!

While most regions of the world witness increased standards of living, better health care, and greater economic opportunity, Africans continue to face famine, wide-spread disease, high levels of political corruption, and war. Consequently, Africa has grown poorer with each passing decade since gaining its independence. Recognizing the challenge and opportunity that Africa presents, the Mercatus Center team will focus its research efforts on enterprise-based solutions to poverty to be found in Africa--solutions that can serve as a lesson for the rest of the world about what is possible when human creativity is unleashed. Click here to learn more...

 

Field Research

Each year, the Mercatus Center's Global Prosperity Initiative sends scholars and graduate students to the field to roll up their sleeves and take a first hand look at underdevelopment. Searching for common sense solutions from the point of view of the entrepreneur, the Mercatus Center Scholars use innovative data collection techniques with an eye toward US policy. Click here to learn more...

 

Publications

Making Hurricane Response More Effective

Mercatus Policy Series, Policy Comments
Steven Horwitz
March 19, 2008

In this policy comment Professor Horwitz compares the relative effectiveness of Wal-Mart, the US Coast Guard, and FEMA in the hours and days after Katrina made landfall and pulls out policy implications about how to better engage the public and private sectors after future disasters.

International Property Rights Index 2008

Research Papers/Studies
Karol Boudreaux
February 26, 2008

Enterprise Africa! lead researcher Karol Boudreaux comments on land titling efforts in Africa as a means of erasing the problems of poverty. 

Paths to Property

Books
Karol Boudreaux, Paul Dragos Aligica
December 18, 2007

This book explores some of the problems and challenges associated with the strategies and policy processes that may lead to the creation of property rights. There is a danger that the cumulated disappointments resulting from defective implementation of formalized property rights will lead, sooner or later, to an overall dismissal of the very idea that secure property are essential for growth and human flourishing.  This book argues that there is only one way to stop this disturbing possibility:  more sensible, more realistic, and better informed implementation strategies.

Economics in Many Lessons

News Articles and Op-Eds
Karol Boudreaux, Donald Boudreaux
November 20, 2007

Mercatus scholars Karol and Donald Boudreaux share some positive lessons from Rwanda in this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review piece. "If you travel through Rwanda today you'll find that something nearly miraculous is happening: People who not long ago were bitter enemies are now working together to build businesses, to improve their lives and the lives of their families and to shape a new and a better future."

Ensuring Disaster

Mercatus Policy Series, Policy Comments
Daniel Sutter
September 12, 2007

Natural disasters are called "Acts of God," but the severity of their impact depends upon many factors, including state insurance regulations. Insurance provides voluntary, contractual disaster relief - insurers agree to pay disaster losses in exchange for payment of premiums. In the United States, state commissions regulate entry, exit, and premiums, and contractual forms in the insurance industry.

View All

Recent Events

Fighting Poverty through Entrepreneurship in Africa

Start: April 26, 2007 09:00 AM

This panel presentation, sponsored by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and is part of a week of Enterprise Africa! events in New York and Washington, DC. 

Fighting Poverty through Entrepreneurship in Africa

Start: April 24, 2007 05:30 PM

This panel presentation, sponsored by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and New York University's Africa House and hosted by the Stern School of Business, kicks off a week of Enterprise Africa! events in New York and Washington, DC.

Access Academia: Out of the Ivory Tower and onto the Hill

Start: January 24, 2007 11:30 AM

The Mercatus Center hosted an exclusive series of welcome events for the staff of the 110^th Congress.

The Crisis of Katrina: Lessons for Preparedness and Response

Start: August 23, 2006 09:00 AM

Scholars from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University released preliminary findings of a five-year research project analyzing these issues with commentary provided by journalists from the National Journal and Pulitzer Prize winning New Orleans Times-Picayune.

New Zealand Business Roundtable 2004

Start: October 19, 2004 08:00 AM

On October 19, 2004 GPI Senior Fellow Frederic Sautet delivered a presentation on institutions and entrepreneurship to the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR). 

View All

For more information about this program, contact:
Curtis Melvin
703-993-4930
cmelvin@chims.net