Cato’s scholars seek to advance policies and support institutions in developing and developed countries that protect human rights and extend the range of personal choice. In particular, Cato research explores the central role that freedom in its various dimensions—economic, civil, and personal—plays in human progress and in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems, including global poverty.
Global Freedom
Featured Book
Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance
Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes) to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, author Mustafa Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.
Featured Content
Women’s Rights Are Improving Worldwide
To most benefit women, the promotion of equal rights between the sexes should go hand in hand with the promotion of high levels of overall freedom.
187 Million Immigrants Have Moved to Freer Countries
Millions of people’s lives will depend on the rules around immigration in the future, and whatever other considerations policymakers have, they should at least recognize that more immigration can make the world much freer.
The Perilous State of Religious Freedom Worldwide
China is among the worst offenders, but there are many others, as a new report from a Catholic aid organization details.
A Classical Liberal Agenda for Singapore
Singapore is one of the great development success stories of our times, having risen from poverty to prosperity in just a couple of generations. It achieved such progress by embracing high levels of economic freedom. But its political system is authoritarian and it limits civil liberties. How sustainable is the so‐called Singapore model?
Where Islam and Reason Meet
A medieval debate about God’s relationship to goodness can help explain today’s conflicts over religion and society in the Islamic world.
In Praise of Foreign Direct Investment–(Almost) All of It
It’s actually pretty great for American workers and their surrounding communities.
Featured Book
Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know
Think the world is getting worse? You’re wrong: the world is, for the most part, not getting worse. But 58 percent of folks in 17 countries that were surveyed in 2016 thought the world is either getting worse or staying the same rather than getting better. The uncontroversial data on major global trends in this book will persuade you that this dark view of the prospects for humanity and the natural world is, in large part, badly mistaken.