European Fellows

Rahim Taghizadegan

Austrian Senior Fellow

Rahim Taghizadegan is the founder and director of the Institut für Wertewirtschaft (Institute for value-based economics) in Vienna, an independent research institute on economic and philosophical issues. He teaches at the University of Liechtenstein, the Business University of Vienna, the University Halle/Saale (Germany), and the SMC University (Zurich).

Rahim studied physics, economics and sociology in Vienna and Lausanne (Switzerland) and learned from some of the leading scholars of the Austrian School in the USA. His most recent books are Wirtschaft wirklich verstehen (“Really understanding economics”, Finanzbuchverlag), a comprehensive introduction to the Austrian School of economics and, together with Eugen Schulak, Vom Systemtrottel zum Wutbürger (“From system idiot to angry citizen”, Ecowin Verlag), a philosophical reckoning.

Professor Josef Šima, Ph.D

Czech Senior Fellow

Josef Šíma is professor of economics and free-market scholar living in Prague, Czech Republic. He got both his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Economics, Prague, where he chaired for several years Department of Institutional Economics. Since 2009 he has served as the president of CEVRO Institute [school of legal and social studies], a small, private, free-market college in Prague.

Josef has served for years as an editorial director of Liberální Institut, Prague, an oldest free-market think-tank in the Czech Republic; translated over 10 books (including Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action, Murray Rothbard’s, Man, Economy and State, Power and Market, and The Ethics of Liberty, and Milton Friedman’s The Money Mischief) and supervised publication of tens of more.

He is a founder and editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary scholarly journal New Perspectives on Political Economy and the president of a major interdisciplinary gathering of Austrian and free-market scholars in Central Europe, Prague Conference on Political Economy, both of which are becoming flag ships of CEVRO Institute. Josef has published several articles in professional and popular journals, and a number of his own books (in Czech), including Market in Time and Space (2000) and Introduction to the Logic of Social Action – Law and Economics Primer (2004).

Dr. Cecile Philippe

French Senior Fellow

Cécile Philippe holds a doctorate in economics and a Diploma in Advanced Studies in business management in developing countries from the University of Paris-IX Dauphine, (having graduated from the Aix Marseille III University). At the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Auburn University centre in the USA, she completed her thesis on information theories and the emergence of an online market in information.

Cécile founded the Institut économique Molinari in 2003 and remains its president. She is the author of numerous newspaper articles published in French as well as in English. In 2007, her first book, titled “C’est trop tard pour la terre” (“It’s too late for the earth”), was published by Éditions JC Lattès. The book deals with environmental policy and seeks to put an end to various myths, including the notion that regulation and taxation go hand in hand with environmental improvement. She has been interviewed many times on public policy matters in the French media, and has published op-ed articles in several French-speaking countries.

Dr. Cécile Philippe

Dr. Hardy Bouillon

German Senior Fellow

Hardy Bouillon, Extracurricular Professor for Philosophy at the University of Trier, serves as Professor of Philosophy and Economics at SMC University, Vienna, and Deputy Director of New Direction Foundation, Brussels. His guest professorships have taken him to Duisburg-Essen, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna and Zagreb.

Hardy is a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society and author or editor of numerous books and more than 140 articles which have been published in Chinese, English, German, Italian, Romanian, Turkish, and Vietnamese. His books include 5 monographs and 13 (co-)edited volumes. Among these are “Government: Servant or Master?” (1993), “Values and the Social Order”, 2 vol., (1995), “Libertarians and Liberalism” (1997), and “Ordered Anarchy” (2007). His most recent book “Business Ethics and the Austrian Tradition in Economics” has been published by Routledge in 2011.

Dr. Alberto Mingardi

Italian Senior Fellow

Dr Alberto Mingardi is Director General of Istituto Bruno Leoni (www.brunoleoni.it), Italy’s free market think tank, which he founded in 2003. There, he is responsible for fund-raising and development, and enjoys the privilege of working with a team of marvelous people.

He pursued undergraduate and graduate studies at University of Pavia (Italy). His writings appeared in many national and international newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Il Sole 24 Ore. He is the English translator of Antonio Rosmini’s The Constitution Under Social Justice.

Alberto Mingardi

Dr. Mihal Vladimir Topan

Romanian Senior Fellow

Dr. Mihal Vladimir Topan is President of The Ludwig von Mises Institute – Romania, Lecturer/Assistant professor PhD at the Academy of Economic Studies – Bucharest, Department of International Business and Economics. He lectures on International Trade, International Trade Policies, Comparative Economic Policies, International Economics, Macroeconomics, Corporate Governance. He received his PhD in Economics (International Business and Economics) from the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest with a thesis entitled The Enterprise in International Business. An Austrian School Perspective (defended in October, 2009).

Mihal’s activities within The Ludwig von Mises Institute – Romania include translations into Romanian (such as Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and The Ethics of Liberty (together with Dan Cristian Comănescu) by Murray N. Rothbard); conducting seminars (such as the advanced Mises Seminar or the beginner level Small Books, Great Ideas seminar) and writing reviews and articles for The Private Property Order (the online periodical of the Institute). He has also been heavily involved in the publishing activities of the institute and in event organization.

Peter Gonda

Slovak Senior Fellow

Peter Gonda (Ph.D.) is the Director of the Conservative Institute of M. R. Štefánik and external lecturer of economics at the Comenius University in Bratislava. He deals with principles of economics, public finance, monetary and banking systems and other economic and social topics from a free society point of view.

Peter was coordinator of the publications Economic Consequences of Slovakia’s Accession to EU (2002), Draft of Welfare Reform in Slovakia (2005), Program declaration of a reformed government: Guide for responsible politicians on the road to freer society and thinner government (2010) and the co-editor of the books Slovakia on its Way to the Unknown (2003) and In Defence of the Free Market (2007). He also wrote the chapter “Economic and Ethical Foundations of Free Society” in the textbook Ethics in Management (2008).

At present, he coordinates and lectures at seminars within the Academy of Classical Economics and coordinates the economic lectures of qualified free market thinkers in Slovakia within the Conservative Economic Quarterly Lecture Series (2009 Templeton Freedom Award winning project in the Ethics and Values category).

He lives in Bratislava with his wife and their two children.

Joakim Fagerström

Swedish Senior Fellow

Joakim Fagerström is co-founder of the Swedish Mises Institute.

Professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez

Spanish Senior Fellow

Professor Gabriel Calzada is Associate Professor of Economics at the King Juan Carlos University in Spain and a Founder-President of the libertarian think tank Instituto Juan de Mariana. He is also Vice-Director of the Austrian School-oriented and scholarly Procesos de Marcado. He has been a Rowley Fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Centre for the New Europe. He ia a frequent broadcaster on television and has written extensively for such publications as Libertad Digital, Spanish Herald, Expansion, Mises Daily, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Procesos de Mercados, La Ilustracion Liberal, and Canarias Liberal.

Professor Gabriel Calzada