The Atlantic Council's Freedom and Prosperity Center and the Acton Institute have awarded Ignacio P. Campomanes, researcher residen t at the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID) of the University of Navarra, a grant to fund a . Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra, a scholarship to fund a project of research graduate "Pathways to Prosperity: Interactions between Rule of Law, Economic Freedom and Politics". These grants aim to goal promote the research that explores the concepts of freedom and democracy and the mechanisms through which they affect overall prosperity.

"A simple glance at the world today reveals a clear picture: the most prosperous countries are, almost without exception, consolidated democracies in which freedom and fundamental rights are preserved and defended," explains NCID's researcher Ignacio P. Campomanes.

The professor of Economics of the University of Navarra adds that "historical and current examples of democracies that have not been able to generate prosperity for their citizens show that freedom and democracy are not sufficient conditions for economic development ".

In fact, according to Campomanes, "the strong economic growth of China and other non-democratic countries in recent decades could lead some to conclude that freedom is not even necessary to generate growing prosperity, making it difficult for the less developed countries of the world to accept liberal and democratic values, and favouring the wave of populism and democratic backsliding in developed countries".

This project of research aims to shed light on discussion freedom-prosperity by developing a new theoretical framework that disaggregates the different dimensions of freedom (legal, economic and political), analyses their interactions and linkages and the mechanisms through which they affect development and prosperity. The first phase of project, which will run from July to December 2022, has received funding of 54,072 euros from the Atlantic Council and the Acton Institute. It will focus on reviewing the definition of these proposed dimensions of freedom from the fields of law, political science and Economics, as well as existing indicators to measure their level in different countries and time periods.

Ignacio P. Campomanes is graduate in Economics and Law from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2010) and PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota (2018). During the 2018/2019 academic year he was scholarship recipient postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and, since 2019, he is researcher resident at NCID.

Campomanes' research focuses on the intersection between political Economics and macroeconomics with projects on topics such as the relationship of inequality and social mobility with fiscal redistribution and economic growth, the effectiveness of external financial aid when there are political constraints or the dynamic determinants of political-economic unions.