Pacific Research Institute

The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy PRI is the California-based free-market think tank which promotes "the principles of individual freedom as well as personal responsibility" through policies that emphasize the free economy, private initiative, as alive as limited government. PRI was founded in 1979 by British philanthropist Antony Fisher.

Sally Pipes has been president of the institute since 1991. She writes acolumn for Forbes.com, focusing on health care in the United States. In 2008 she founded the Benjamin Rush Institute as a conservative connective for medical students with 20 chapters at medicals schools across America. She is originally from Canada and became a U.S. citizen in 2006.

Policy areas

The organization is active in the policy areas of education, economics, health care, and the environment. It operates the Center for California's Future, which has a intention of "reinvigorating California's entrepreneurial, self-reliant traditions" and the Laffer Center, which is "focused on educating people on free-markets and supply-side economics."

From 1996 through 2009, the organization published an annual Index of leading Environmental Indicators, which tracked environmental trends worldwide. PRI started the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a New York-based think tank focusing on health policy.