The Atlas Economic Research Foundation, also known as the Atlas Network, is a non-profit organization based in the United States which organizes and convenes workshops, offers training, runs prize programs, and provides advisory services in order to continue growing and strengthening an informal network of more than 400 free market think tanks in 84 different countries.

The organization was founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher. After founding the Institute of Economic Affairs in London in 1955, Fisher had helped in the establishment of the Fraser Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Pacific Research Institute in the 1970s. Fisher conceived of Atlas as a means of institutionalizing his work and therefore replicate the "independent think tank" model all over the world.

The mission of Atlas, according to John Blundell, Atlas' president from 1987 to 1990, "is to litter the world with free-market think-tanks".

Since its formation in 1981, Atlas has provided over $20 million in grants to think tanks that have passed its screening process. Atlas aims to increase that amount tenfold in the next decade. In 2009, Atlas provided $2,733,021 in grants to its network of think tanks. While the large conservative foundations take the approach of making large sustained and often untied grants, Atlas believes less is more, providing new think tanks with only small grants of $5,000 or less. Atlas's goal is to wean their think tanks and projects they support off of the modest annual funding within five years, making exception only for specific innovative projects.

Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party, and has been ranked among the party's most influential voices on economic policy.

Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan graduated from Miami University in Ohio and later worked as a marketing consultant for Ryan Incorporated Central, run by a branch of his family. In the mid to late 1990s, he worked as an aide to United States Senator Bob Kasten, as legislative director for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, and as a speechwriter for former U.S. Representative and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp of New York. In 1998, Ryan won election to the United States House of Representatives, succeeding the two-term incumbent, fellow Republican Mark Neumann.

Ryan currently chairs the House Budget Committee, where he has played a prominent public role in drafting and promoting the Republican Party's long-term budget proposal. He introduced a plan, The Path to Prosperity, in April 2011 as an alternative to the budget proposal of President Barack Obama, and helped introduce The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal in March 2012, in response to Obama's 2013 budget. Ryan is one of the three co-founders of the Young Guns Program, an electoral recruitment and campaign effort by House Republicans. He endorsed Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney for the 2012 United States presidential election. Ryan has been considered as a possible running mate for Romney.

Leonard Liggio (born July 5, 1933) is a classical liberal author, research professor of law at George Mason University, and executive vice president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, USA.

Liggio provided editorial direction for Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, a periodical published by the Cato Institute from 1978-1979 then by the Institute for Humane Studies from 1980-1982.

Liggio is a visiting professor of law at the Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala City, at the Academia Istropolitana in Bratislava (Slovakia), at the Institute for Political and Economic Studies (Georgetown University) and at the University of Aix-en-Provence, France. He is executive director of the John Templeton Foundation Freedom Project at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, where he led the International Freedom Project from 1998 to 2003. Liggio is a distinguished senior scholar with the Institute for Humane Studies, where he served as director of Programs in History and Social Theory from 1974 to 1977, as executive vice-president from 1979 to 1980, then president from 1980 to 1989. Liggio served the Humane Studies Foundation as chairman from 1980 to 1994, then vice-chairman from 1994 to 1998.

Frank C. Stilwell (1856 - March 20, 1882) was an outlaw Cowboy who murdered at least two men in Cochise County during 1877-1882. For four months he was a deputy sheriff in Tombstone, Arizona Territory for Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan. Stilwell owned interests in several mines and various businesses, including a saloon, a wholesale liquor business, a stage line, and at his death livery stables in Charleston and Bisbee. He was also a partner in a Bisbee area saloon with fellow outlaw Pete Spence.

He was closely involved in the events leading up to and following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, and was suspected in the murder of Morgan Earp on March 18, 1882. Two days after Morgan's death, Frank Stilwell was killed by Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp in a Tucson train yard while apparently waiting to ambush the Earps. Arrest warrants were immediately issued for Earp and four others in his posse suspected of murdering Stilwell. Earp left Arizona Territory for Colorado and was never extradited. Wyatt Earp admitted late in his life to killing Stilwell at close range with a shotgun.