MATT WARNER

President

Matt Warner is president of Atlas Network, a nonprofit grantmaking organization committed to supporting local NGOs in more than 90 countries. Matt is the editor of Poverty and Freedom: Case Studies on Global Economic Development and coined the term "the outsider's dilemma" to describe the challenge of helping low-income countries develop without getting in the way of their most viable paths to prosperity. Matt writes, speaks, and consults internationally on the topics of economics, institution building, nonprofit management, and impact philanthropy. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Hill, Cato Journal, Forbes, Harvard's Education Next, and EconTalk, among others. Matt has a master's degree in economics from George Mason University and is certified by Georgetown University in organizational development consulting. He is also a 2019-2020 Penn Kemble Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy, a member of American Enterprise Institute's Leadership Network and a recipient of America's Future Foundation's 2019 Buckley Award.

Matt and his wife Chrissy, an attorney, live in Vienna, Virginia with their four children.

Harnessing an enabling environment for women post-pandemic, Devex, August 6, 2020
Trade Policy Can Lead Covid-19 Economic Recovery, CSIS, August 6, 2020
The Pandemic Could Be the Crisis Liberalism Needed, Foreign Policy, July 13, 2020 (Spanish)
Lions of Liberty Podcast: COVID-19 and Global Poverty, July 13, 2020
National Review's The Editors podcast with Rich Lowry, May 11, 2020
Economic Freedom & Poverty, Conversations on Leadership Matters, Apr. 26, 2020
Leveraging Resources Within the Liberty Movement, The Bob Zadek Show, Mar. 4, 2020
Q&A: Five Questions with Matt Warner, John Templeton Foundation, Feb. 25, 2020
State capability and liberty must advance together to end poverty, Devex, Feb. 3, 2020
Wake Up! with Randy Corporon, Dec. 28, 2019
Poverty and Freedom with Matt Warner and Dan Rivers, iHeartRadio, Dec. 13, 2019
Why Foreign Aid Does More Harm Than Good, Independent Women's Forum, Dec. 6, 2019
Poverty and Freedom: Global Economic Development, Cato Daily Podcast, Oct. 30, 2019
When Tackling Poverty, Context and Consent Matter, Washington Examiner, Oct. 24, 2019
What Trump's Foreign Aid Fight Can Teach Us, The Hill, Aug. 29, 2019
Development Economics and the Outsider's Dilemma, Cato Daily Podcast, Mar. 23, 2019
Can Think Tanks Succeed Where Foreign Aid Has Failed?, Fee.org, Jan. 22, 2019
Simeon Djankov and Matt Warner on the Doing Business report, EconTalk, Nov. 27, 2017
Cut Foreign Aid to Help the World's Poor, CapX, Oct. 5, 2017
Is Development Aid the New Colonialism? Fee.org, Sep. 28, 2017
Book Review: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Cato Journal, Winter 2016
Millennials Want Work with Purpose, Washington Times, Dec. 25, 2014
Ideas Matter, Morning Talk, South Africa FM (segment begins at 5:42). Mar. 28, 2014
Competitiveness, Not Stimulus, Key to Europe's Recovery, Forbes.com, Oct. 28, 2013
Money Myth in Education, Washington Times, Jan. 1, 2007

High-resolution headshot for media, editorial, and approved event use.

WRITINGS

TEN WINS IN TEN COUNTRIES: HOW ATLAS NETWORK’S INVESTMENTS IN ECONOMIC FREEDOM PAY OFF

Thinking big is important for the cause of economic freedom, and achieving real wins is what thinking big is all about. Argentina wasn’t the only place our partners thought big and won. Here are nine more countries where Atlas Network invested successfully in recent victories for economic freedom by our independent, local partne...

NEW DOING BUSINESS INDICATOR WILL HELP REDUCE CORRUPTION

The events of 2020 have hardly strengthened our faith in big institutions. However, later this year the World Bank will have a chance to help restore our trust in one of its core functions: gathering and disseminating data.

OVERCOMING THE OUTSIDER’S DILEMMA: CAN PHILANTHROPISTS HELP THE DEVELOPING WORLD?

Today’s top-down, economic development aid model is unavoidably flawed. The nature of economic development requires idiosyncratic solutions that can’t be successfully designed or administered by outsiders. Instead, locally grown solutions aimed at transforming the institutional environment in favor of market growth, primarily th...

THE PANDEMIC COULD BE THE CRISIS LIBERALISM NEEDED

The world may be reaching a dangerous inflection point for liberalism. According to the latest reports from Freedom House, over the last 15 years the share of unfree countries in the world has risen while the share of free countries has dropped. Today, government deficits are spiking in response to the public’s demand for interv...

CAN THINK TANKS SUCCEED WHERE FOREIGN AID HAS FAILED?

In Ruhiira, Uganda, an international aid project once offered villagers $300,000 to grow maize instead of matoke, a banana-like starch. Maize, the aid experts reasoned, was better to farm because it is nutritious, drought-resistant, and produces high yields. The experts were right. At harvest time, the villagers found themselves...

CONTRACTING FOR SUCCESS

A few years ago, I was frustrated with a contractor’s failure to meet even the most basic terms of our agreement. I had not heard from him for an extended period despite sending emails to see what was happening. When we finally connected, we were both frustrated (I had stopped payment, which usually gets someone’s attention). As...

THE DIMINISHING ROLE OF THE WORLD BANK: HOW LOCAL THINK TANKS ARE LEADING THE POVERTY FIGHT

News that the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, is calling it quits to join the private sector has heightened the debate over what to do about foreign aid inefficacy. Kim made clear in an email to staff that, in his view, the “massive development finance gap” in low-income countries is best addressed by private investment. K...

PULLING THE ANDON CORD: USING TEAMS TO MAKE DECISIONS

In the early 1980s, the workers at a General Motors plant in California had become so disillusioned with their jobs that they sometimes sabotaged the quality of the cars on purpose. The plant began to perform so poorly that the company shut it down. That failure, though, is only the first part of a great turnaround story. In a s...

THE GREEN NEW DEAL’S SIMPLE MISTAKE

The latest science on complex adaptive systems demands that we understand wealth as a product of evolutionary processes, not government fiat.

CALLING YOUR SHOTS IN 2018: MEASURING SUCCESS IN THE NONPROFIT SECTOR

I grew up playing pool with my Dad. We played “no slop” which means you had to call your shot before you struck the cue ball. If you sunk your ball in a way you didn’t intend, you would have to pull it out, put it back on the table, and lose your turn.

CHOOSING A BIGGER POND: WHY NONPROFIT LEADERS NEED A GLOBAL NETWORK

Without profit motive, can nonprofit leaders be as innovative and successful as their profit-seeking counterparts? As it turns out, there’s a type of motivation that transcends the drive for profit and it can influence the behavior of nonprofit leaders towards improving results as well. It’s called social comparison—and research...

UNLEASHING PRODUCTIVE KNOWLEDGE: AID REFORMERS CONFRONT THE OUTSIDER’S DILEMMA

There is growing consensus from experts and practitioners that international aid needs dramatic change in order to become more effective, more transparent, and less vulnerable to criticisms of waste, corruption, and even net harm.

WHAT TRUMP’S FOREIGN AID FIGHT CAN TEACH US

Last week Trump backed down from his controversial threat to cut billions in unused foreign aid funding. The news, no doubt, came as a huge relief to the more than 90 aid organizations that had joined together to urge him to reconsider. Sam Worthington, president, and CEO of InterAction, an alliance of more than 180 internationa...

GETTING BEYOND THE NONPROFIT PLATEAU: START WITH A TEAM PERFORMANCE TUNE-UP

Good teams can hit a wall. Despite talented people and no shortage of hard work, sometimes the rate at which results have been eclipsing previous benchmarks starts to slow down. Sound familiar? I’m talking about the puzzling plateau that frustrates not because anything is really going wrong. It’s because the level of success has...

ALTERNATIVES TO THE NEW SCIENTISM IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

When Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were announced as two of this year’s Nobel Prize winners, it prompted a fresh flurry of public critiques of their work in development economics. From voices as diverse as Oxfam’s Duncan Green and Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok, many economists and aid experts have cautioned against pin...