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.
Moreover, our efforts must not be confined to our western European democracies : we reach out to people from all over the world and especially from former socialist countries. Youngsters in those countries have a strong desire to learn new things, to learn new ways of understanding social interactions and to get rid of the archaic dirigiste modes of thought. Thus besides Canada or The Netherlands for instance, we also welcome people from Kirgizstan, Argentina or Egypt.
A free society is a society of exchange. Value comes from exchange: our “Europe & Liberty” seminars or our summer university are wonderful means for cultural exchange, a unique moment for sharing different experiences and become friends. And of course the summer university, is a marvelous vector of scientific exchange between intellectuals. All those activities enable IES Europe to maintain a strong and active network with students and professors or intellectuals, with special links with Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. After seminars, students still receive readings and can discuss documents via internet. Contacts are thus made on a regular basis. Four years ago, students even decided to create an IES alumni association, LiNK (that stands for LIberal NetworK).
Board Members
Douglas B. Rasmussen
Senior Scholar at IES-Europe
Douglas B. Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in NYC. Among the books he has co-authored (with Douglas J. Den Uyl) are: Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (1991); Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (2006); and The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (2016). He has authored numerous articles in many scholarly anthologies and in such journals as: the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly; American Philosophical Quarterly; International Philosophical Quarterly; The New Scholasticism; The Personalist; Public Affairs Quarterly; Social Philosophy & Policy; The Review of Metaphysics; and The Thomist. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Ayn Rand Society and as a member of Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is co-editor (with Den Uyl) of The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984). His areas of research interest are epistemology, ontology, ethics, and political philosophy as well as the moral foundations of capitalism.
Pierre Garello
President of IES-Europe
President of IES-Europe and Editor-in-Chief of both the Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines and Journal des Libertés, Pierre Garello is Professor of Economics at the Faculté d’Economie et Gestion of Aix Marseille University in France. He has published various articles on Austrian economics, law and economics (especially competition law and contract law). He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines, a scholarly review dealing with economic, legal, philosophical and political issues, in the tradition of the French Classical Liberal School. He is also at the center of a liberal network in Europe and is the coordinator of the European liberal think tanks Resource Bank. He is directing research for IREF, a think tank that promotes tax competition and sound public finances.
Christian Năsulea
Executive Director at IES-Europe
Christian Nasulea teaches economics at the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest where he is a member of the Department of International Relations and Universal History and he’s also an associate professor with the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. His courses cover topics such as Business Administration, Global Economics, Globalisation and History of Economic Thought. He is a fellow of the Institut de Recherches Economiques et Fiscales. In addition to his university work he also develops learning resources for high school students who are interested in economics for the Romanian NGO Literati. His areas of research interest include public policy and stimuli for economic development, political and commercial negotiation in international relations, behavioural economics and decision processes.
Diana Năsulea
Programs Manager at IES-Europe
Diana is a PhD candidate with the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. Her thesis focuses on cultural-creative sectors as main drivers of economic growth. She is also a fellow of IREF. She holds a BA in International Relations and a MA in History.
She is currently a PhD candidate in economics with the Departments of Economics and Economic Policies at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.
