Entries for the 2017 Breakthrough Prize are closed. We will be announcing the question and entry details for the 2018 Breakthrough Prize later in 2017.

The freeing of markets and economies has brought about the greatest flourishing in human wealth, health and well-being in the history of our species. Since the middle of the 20^th century poverty rates have collapsed, life spans have increased and incomes have sky-rocketed, particularly in the developing world. There can be no question that policies encouraging freer trade, freer markets and freer people have brought about these improvements. So why are we not ‘all Hayekians now’?

Simply put, western free marketeers and liberals have not done enough to practise what we preach in our own nations. Too often policies have been framed as being ‘good for economic growth’ or ‘important for business’ without doing enough to explain why the policy will improve the lot of those workers who ‘just about manage’. The Richard Koch Breakthrough Prize instead looks for essays that will exuberantly and openly seek new, exciting free-market solutions to improve the prosperity of the bottom third in advanced economies.