Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

Given the chance, most people would provide food, clothing, and shelter for their families.  So what are the obstacles that keep families in vast areas of the world from following through on this basic human instinct?  The answers lie in The Road to Prosperity.  With contributions by some of America's most prominent economists, The Road to Prosperity describes the intellectual foundations of The Heritage Foundation's annual Index of Economic Freedom and helps to establish the Index as the premier resource in understanding the vital connection between economic freedom and the ability of people to achieve prosperity.

In highlighting and defining a new solution to an old problem, this is the first book to bring together in one place ideas that have been percolating and expanding for at least a quarter-century.  The new perspective no longer artificially divides the world into "developed" and "developing" countries.  Similarly, the old economic development poverty solution of transferring income from one government to another is discarded.  Unleashing a country's potential requires removing the economic roadblocks that inhibit its people.  As the barriers tumble one by one, a country can begin to move down the long, previously elusive road to prosperity.

List of Contributors:  Robert J. Barro, Sarah Fitzgerald Cooper, Hernando de Soto, Sebastian Edwards, Ana Isabel Eiras, Daniel T. Griswold, Arthur B. Laffer, Adam Lerrick, Marc A. Miles, and Richard Roll.