Tim Harford author of Messy, Undercover Economist at the FT, Presenter of BBC More or Less won the 2016 Bastiat Prize   for his column in Financial Times Weekend Magazine. His works include looking at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways and explains the fundamental principles of the modern economy.

His theory that challenges and problems can make us more creative than ever, and why success always starts with failure. We need to embrace failure and to constantly adapt, to improvise rather than plan, to work from the bottom up rather than the top down.  His book Messy published in September 2016, explains how to thrive in a tidy-minded world.

The Bastiat Prize, given annually by the Reason Foundation for excellence in journalism. The prize named after Frederic Bastiat whose witty essays explained, “the solutions to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

The finalists for the 2016 Bastiat Prize are:
Charles W. Cooke
Editor, National Review Online; Author, The Conservatarian Manifesto
Robert Guest
Foreign Editor, The Economist; Author, The Shackled Continent
Tim Harford
Columnist, Financial Times; Author, Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World
Jeff Jacoby
Columnist, The Boston Globe 
Jamie Whyte
Author, Crimes Against Logic
Reason Foundation would also like to thank the judges for this year’s Bastiat Prize:
A. Barton Hinkle
Senior Editorial Writer and Columnist, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Megan McArdle
Columnist, Bloomberg View; Author The Up Side of Down
Tom G. Palmer
Executive Vice President for International Programs, Atlas Network
Razeen Sally
Associate Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
Rebecca Weisser
Former Opinion Page Editor, The Australian