Matt Warner, the Chief Operating Officer & Senior Fellow from Atlas Network visited Athens last week after he received an invitation from KEFiM. During his stay in Athens, he met with friends of freedom and participated in workshop.

Atlas launched a very important initiative about viewing development differently. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

One of the things that many people in the world agree on, is we don’t like to see people suffering in extreme poverty.

There is broad consensus that economic opportunity is key for people to lift themselves out of extreme stations of poverty. And many people are working hard on this. What’s critical though is how do you help people in other countries where you yourself are an outsider. We have compassion to help but we are not locals, we do not know the specific circumstances. And we put a premium on technical expertise, but in reality, what’s also very important is the local knowledge of trade-offs economically. So what Atlas Network is doing is focusing on how outsiders should be supporting local civil society organisations in supporting their vision forward and not trying to impose our particular way on them. So Atlas Network partners with think tanks and other non-profit organisations who have their own vision for creating economic opportunity through economic choices in the marketplace. And we’re moving barriers to opportunity and entrepreneurship that might or might not be well intentioned but are really getting in the way of economic progress. So by supporting think tanks and not-profits in other countries who are identifying sometimes very simple, small policies that seem like small changes but have big impact, you can make a big difference. So for example in India the Center for Civil Society is a think tank that has a relatively small budget, it doesn’t have the World Bank’s budget and yet this very small think tank identified the need to remove the minimum capital requirements for new businesses. This previous policy said that before you can start a business you have to go to a bureaucrat and prove that you have like a 106% of GDP per capita in your bank account. Now, what’s the purpose of this? I suppose the purpose is to help prevent people from taking unnecessary risks. And yet who is in the best position to decide whether it’s worth taking a risk? Some bureaucrat or the persons themselves whose own capital they will be risking? And what happens when you have a lot of little laws like this that are bureaucrat dependent is it becomes an opportunity for bribery and corruption. And so not only does the local bureaucrat is not the right person to make the decision about whether to start a business, it’s also an opportunity to create corruption. So we talked with one gentleman who said ‘i know i need the x amount of money to start my business, but I actually need 3x because that’s what it is going to cost to bribe a local bureaucrat to get my certification to say “OK, I have enough money to start my business”. The think tank eliminated this minimum capital requirement, that is one of the things that is scored by the World Bank’s Doing Business report. Because of research we commissioned we can translate what the changes in score that that policy change implicates for change in poverty. And just by that one simple change, we can remove the barriers to let a lot of people pursue for themselves a life of greater prosperity.

One of the things that our organisation in Washington is interested in is getting out and learning from think tanks around the world that are advancing really strong agenda for economic progress. And so I’m here in Athens to observe and learn from what KEFIM is doing here to improve the future of the society here in Greece. And I’m learning a lot of lessons about what a think tank can achieve when it assembles a really talented team, a really passionate team and identify the kind of things that are really going to make a difference for all people of Greece. So it’s been a real privilege to come observe and learn what a great group you’ve got here. It’s a great compliment to the people of Greece that you have institutions like KEFIM here fighting the good fight.