In Focus: The Case for Privatising the BBC

About

Philip Booth is Academic and Research Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Professor of Finance Public Policy and Ethics at St Mary's University Twickenham. He was formerly Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at the Cass Business School where he also served as Associate Dean. He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Durham and a PhD in finance. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and of the Royal Statistical Society. Previously Philip Booth worked for the Bank of England as an adviser on financial stability issues. He has written widely including a number of books on investment finance social insurance and pensions as well as on the relationship between Catholic social teaching and economics. Ryan Bourne (contributor) is Head of Public Policy at the IEA and a weekly columnist for City AM. He has previously worked at both the Centre for Policy Studies and Frontier Economics and has written widely on a range of economic issues. He has both MA (Cantab) and MPhil qualifications in economics from the University of Cambridge. Tim Congdon (contributor) is often regarded as the UK's leading 'monetarist'economist and was one of the foremost advocates of so-called Thatcherite monetarism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Buckingham where he has established a new research institute the Institute of International Monetary Research (www.mv-pt.org). His books include Money in a Free Society (New York: Encounter Books 2011). Stephen Davies (contributor) is Head of Education at the IEA in London. From 1979 until 2009 he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University.He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling GreenOhio and Program Officer at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. Cento Veljanovski (contributor) is Managing Partner of Case Associates and IEA Fellow in Law & Economics. He was previously Research and Editorial Director at the IEA (1989-91) and held academic positions in University College London (1984-87) Oxford University(1974-84) and other UK North American and Australian universities. He holds several degrees in law and economics (BEc MEc DPhil). He has written many books and articles on media and broadcasting industrial economics and law and economics including Selling the State: Privatisation in Britain Weidenfeld: 1988) and for the IEA Freedom I Broadcasting (1988) The Economics of Law (1990; second edition 2006) and together with Cambridge University Press Economic Principles of Law (2007).