Think tanks: who's hot and who's not: the latest TIE study comparing economic think tank visibility in the media. The hot economists and hot topics.

Until about 1970, most Americans thought that the President arrived at the White House by summing up all of the interests represented by the winning party's platform. The ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans in the House reached an all time low around the same time. Thirty years later, with presidential candidates less beholden to their parties and the differences between the parties growing larger on many issues, the world has become increasingly complicated. The more complicated events become, the greater is the need for interpretation along the way to help make sense of what is happening. Only politics and religion could rank ahead of economics in terms of complexity. That's where the economic experts at the think tanks come in: they offer a story to explain the economic data.

A study by Nicolas Ruble (The International Economy, September/October 2000) evaluated the press visibility of twelve economic policy think tanks and 171 of their scholars from July 1997 through June 1999. The results attracted so much attention that the survey was subsequently extended by Adam Posen using highly compatible methodology to cover sixteen think tanks and 276 economists through June 2002 (TIE, Fall 2002).

In the 2000 results, the top three think tanks were Brookings Institution, the Institute for International Economics, and the American Enterprise Institute. The top three individual economists were Fred Bergsten of the Institute for International Economics plus Robert Litan and Nicholas Lardy of Brookings. In the 2002 results, Brookings, the Institute for International Economics, and the American Enterprise Institute once again took the top three places. Among the individual economists, Bergsten and Litan remained first and second respectively, but Mr. Lardy dropped to fifth place. The number three position over the longer survey belonged to Robert Reischauer who held positions at both Brookings and the Urban Institute during that time. (1)

A ranking of top economists serves several functions. First, it explicitly identifies high-quality economists for think tanks seeking to improve their relative ranking. Think tanks are an aggregation of individual economists: any institution may increase its relative ranking by courting more productive staff members or fellows from higher-ranked institutions, provided that they know who to seek. Second, the ranking can be used by graduating students to measure the "reputational capital" of prospective employers. New Ph.D.s may decide to work for a think tank that offers them more visibility than they might otherwise receive as a university professor. Finally, a ranking of top economists provides information to the public about the experts whose research policymakers are most likely to use.

We now extend the survey once again to cover more than eight years, from January 1, 1997, through March 30, 2005. The basic methodology remains unchanged. (2) In addition to extending the time frame, this study adds the Los Angeles Times to the publication mix and brings back California's Milken Institute among the think tanks. (3) Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States and California is the sixth largest economy in the world. The Los Angeles Times contributes 15 percent of the citations in this study, a share that would rank it behind only the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal in the earlier study.

Since most news databases are available electronically at least beginning in January 1997, there seemed no strong argument to keep the mid-year start date. Also, allocating the data across months (rather than years) allows the impact of events on the rankings to be examined. We performed all the searches using the same databases and wording as in 2002. We reviewed each article for content rather than just recording the number of "hits" for each search. This means we did not count mentions of appointments, attendance at dinner parties, or other mentions unrelated to the scholar's research. Several times we found hits in articles completely unrelated to the scholar, especially in the case of scholars with names like Robert Lawrence (two "first names") or Paul London (how many people in London are named Paul?). Those citations were not counted in our study.

Despite the several changes, there are few dramatic differences in the rankings of the think tanks from the 2002 study. Among the top nine, none move more than one position in either direction. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Hudson Institute move up substantially; the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Economic Strategy Institute, along with the Council on Foreign Relations, move down quite a bit. The inclusion of the Los Angeles Times most benefited the Milken Institute, although the impact can't be measured with certainty because there was significant turnover during the study. The addition of Ross DeVol and Bill Frey in the late 1990s (ranked in the Top 30, see Table) boosted the citation count, but Frey moved his primary affiliation to Brookings in 2002 and with that (plus the 2004 departure of Joel Kotkin, ranked in the Top 100), the Milken Institute's citation count dropped from a peak of 85 in 2001 to only sixteen last year.

Since we extended the survey back to the beginning of 1997, we can now present ranking comparisons over the last three calendar years using our full data set. Although Brookings continues to rank first overall, we see that they slipped behind the Institute for International Economics in 2004. The American Enterprise Institute has been consistently ranked third, while the Cato Institute and Urban Institute are "most improved" since 2002, moving up ten and four places respectively. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is the only think tank in the group to have slid back significantly from their 2002 position.

A relative newcomer among the think tanks is moving to the forefront since its founding in late 2001: the Center for Global Development. Though not strictly speaking an "economics" think tank, the center includes five scholars who appear in the current study either because they are holding joint appointments with ranked think tanks (for example, Kimberly Ann Elliott with the Institute for International Economics) or because they moved from a ranked think tank to the Center for Global Development (such as Jean Olson Lanjouw from Brookings). Of course, the Center for Global Development cannot be ranked over the full period of the study. However, looking only at the full years 2002 through 2004, it would have ranked at least fourteenth for citations received in each year of their existence. (4)

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY?

The number of academic citations an economist receives during a given year is considered to be a measure of the flow of citations from a stock of past articles; as such it is viewed as a proxy for the value of the human capital an individual has accumulated. For press citations, the measure is much more current. Newspapers ask, "What have you done lately?" and are less likely to be concerned about the stock of past articles. In this sense, press citations are more apt to uncover fresh, exciting, and interesting economic ideas.

Furthermore, press citations are not controlled by academics who may have a vested interest in the reputation of a particular school or department and therefore support a network of authors who cite each other's publications relatively frequently, as has been suggested. (In fact, an additional academic citation has been shown to add more to a professor's salary than the publication of an additional article or book.) For newspapers and magazines, on the other hand, their business is to sell more copies.

One way to do this is through the use of "celebrities," in this case, the best-known economists. Drawing on studies on the use of celebrities in advertising, it is possible that celebrity economists serve to call attention to a publication. Using a celebrity economist might also allow the publication to draw some identification between itself and the think tank or the policies supported by the think tank where the economist is associated. The best example of this use of an economist might be where one has a regular column, such as Robert Barro (Hoover Institution) in Business Week (about ten times per year from 1998 to 2004); or James Glassman (American Enterprise Institute) writing weekly for the Washington Post (1997 to 1999 and 2001 to 2004). Unlike using Britney Spears to advertise soft drinks, the economist is always woven into the context of the product (the story) and so there is little danger to the reporter in quoting an expert on the economy.

There are different ways to measure the top celebrity economists. Since all of our survey citations included the name of the think tank with the name of the scholar, the most accurate measure of "heat" should include a factor for the duration of the scholar's tenure in the studied think tanks. Many move into and out of government positions, which is a legitimate function of the think tanks, but citations garnered while working in government are not counted here. Of the top fifty scholars in this study, however, only six either didn't enter the survey in January 1997 or exited before March 2005. (5) Therefore, we opt to follow the 2002 method and initially use raw totals to rank the economists.

The three economists with the highest individual total citations remain Fred Bergsten, Robert Litan, and Robert Reischauer, though not in that order. After that, we lose comparison to 2002 in part because of our selection of "economists" being strictly based on the think tanks' own designation of "experts" in economics, and also due to our desire to keep all previous scholars in the study. For example, Marshall Wittmann and Stephen Moore were not included in the earlier study; and William Frey was included during his tenure at Milken which presents all their experts as "economists," yet he is not listed as an expert in economics by Brookings. (6) Yet all three appear here in a sort of "blended" survey that is internally consistent with the studies previously published in TIE.

Our 2005 group of Top 30 scholars had an average of three citations per month and authored one article every quarter. Five of the Top 30 worked for more than one ranked think tank during the study. Brookings and the Institute for International Economics appear most frequently as the destination think tank. Since those two are the top-ranked think tanks, it would seem with the information we have so far that a scholar might choose to move to a more visible think tank, although we would need to interview the movers individually to determine their motivations for changing employment. (7)

We break out the top twenty scholars by citations for the last two calendar years. Twenty-seven scholars altogether were ranked in the top twenty in at least one of those two years. There are significant differences in the year-to-year rankings, as one would expect. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute best demonstrates the real potential variation in the number of citations an individual scholar could receive in any given year: he ranked 106th in 2003 and 18th in 2004. "International issues like the war in Iraq were at the forefront of the news in 2003," explains Mr. Tanner. "My primary economic topic is social security, which came to the forefront in 2004." Only Jared Bernstein, Gary Hufbauer, Fred Bergsten, and Bill Gale manage to maintain Top 10 rankings overall and in the individual years.

Missing from the Top 20 in Recent Years list are Top 30 Overall scholars such as Marshall Wittmann, who spent all of 2003 and most of 2004 as director of communications for Senator John McCain. Also missing is Ross DeVol, who remained with the Milken Institute but dropped out of the Top 50 for 2004, possibly due to the loss of Milken Institute's association with Forbes' ranking of U.S. cities. Others, such as Morris Goldstein (13th overall) and William Niskanen (30th overall) ranked just outside the Top 20 in both years. Of the economists at the newcomer Center for Global Development, only Nancy Birdsall would have cracked the Top 20, and then only in 2004 when she accounted for more than 80 percent of the think tank's citations.

RISING IMPORTANCE OF EXPERTS

There is a noticeable upward trend in the number of press mentions given to the think tank scholars since the survey began in January 1997. The number of scholars being cited each month from these seventeen think tanks has also been increasing across time. In fact, there is evidence that people will tend to make their own decisions, to think for themselves if you will, when presented with conflicting information from authority figures. (In the well-known Milgram experiments, the subjects were less likely to shock the "patient" after he started screaming if there were two authority figures present who disagreed with each other.) The body politic can only benefit from the fact that many reporters elect to cite more than one scholar on a topic.

DOES CREDIBLE EQUAL INFLUENTIAL?

The issue of think tank legitimacy is closely related to whether or not, and to what extent, think tanks have influence. Whereas Congressional testimony or citations by members of Congress may be a more direct measure of influence than press citations, they are also more difficult to measure. Further, the legislative process is so complex and covers such a long period of time that it would be foolish to claim to be able to measure which think tanks have impacted legislation (though some think tanks and many economists do just that). We admit that media citations are only a proxy for influence. Still, as Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, tells us, "The measure of the influence of a newspaper goes beyond its national circulation. For example, in addition to being delivered to every member of Congress and most of the New York-based leaders in the financial and entertainment industries, the Los Angeles Times exports journalistic content to six hundred newspapers in the United States and overseas."

Furthermore, the most influential think tank may not necessarily be the most credible. An August 1999 article in the Washington Post cited work by Wake Forest University Professor Andrew Rich based on a survey of Capitol Hill staffers and Washington-based journalists. Of twenty-seven think tanks studied, Heritage ranked first in influence, but Brookings ranked first for credibility.

Because of the need to stay on the leading edge of the research frontier, the requirement for credentialed economists in the think tanks and among press reporters should be very high. Of the economists examined in the study, we know the college degrees of over three hundred--63 percent have Ph.D. degrees. On the downside, only 65 percent of those advanced degrees are in economics. However, nearly all of the lower degrees we were able to identify (masters and bachelors) are specialized in economics. It might be that the think tanks are serving some purpose as a place where budding economists can test their skills and desire to make research their life's work. About 75 percent of the economists studied have taught classes at the university level. In addition to revealing information about graduate degrees that we might not otherwise know about (most universities require at least a master's degree to teach undergraduate classes), teaching is an important way for our economist to spread their influence.

RIGHT, CENTER, AND LEFT; OR RED, WHITE, AND BLUE

Data based on an analysis of lifetime roll-call voting by Congress shows that the gap between liberals and conservatives in the House is as wide as it has been since the early 1900s. More recent evidence shows that the distance between senators of the same party is also declining over time, meaning that they are becoming more partisan as well. At this point, we look at the partisan labels applied to the think tanks by the press. We also look to see if some publications "lean" more toward one type of think tank or another.

We begin by using the political labels the press applies to the think tanks. We did a simple news search in Factiva for the past six months associating each think tank's name within five words of the labels liberal, conservative, centrist, and nonpartisan. Using this methodology, we found clear distinctions in the way that the think tanks are represented. Each think tank scored hits with one label to the exclusion of the others. (Only the Milken Institute could not be classified in this way, and therefore is excluded from the remainder of this section.)

In direct contradiction to claims of a liberal bias in the media, the conservatives garnered more citations in all but one of the past six years. It almost looks as if the press cited the scholars from the liberal think tanks until a conservative president was elected in 2000. At that point, perhaps they figured they should find out what the other guys were saying. Although this speaks poorly to the influence of the press in politics, it does at least speak to the perceived influence of the think tanks. It could be that the think tanks considered most likely to influence the president are more likely to be quoted.

Statistically, we can state without a doubt that there is an association between the leanings of the think tank cited and the publication making the citation.

Four of the twelve publications obviously favor economists from conservative think tanks. USA Today is nearly neutral devoting about the same share to both conservative and liberal think tanks. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Economist and Financial Times also come close to evenly dividing their attention across the spectrum of major political labels. The New York Times clearly favors the liberal think tanks, and nonpartisans get the nod from Foreign Affairs and the International Herald Tribune. No publication in the study gave preference to citing scholars from think tanks they labeled as centrist.

However, because these labels are applied by the publications it is possible that they are simply repeating what the think tanks themselves prefer, especially in the case of "nonpartisan," which all 501(c)3 institutions must be in order to avoid problems with the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, in some cases the press doesn't describe the political orientation of a think tank consistently. For example, the Wall Street Journal calls the Progressive Policy Institute the "Democrat's centrist" think tank, while Business Week leaves off the close ties with the Democratic Party and calls them simply "centrist." Yet the Progressive Policy Institute doesn't label itself "centrist" nor do any of the other think tanks label themselves much of anything other than "nonpartisan."

For that reason, we repeated the analysis using labels based on the scores from the Groseclose and Milyo (G&M) analysis (shown in the last column of the table). The scores are calculated using 1999 as the "base" year, and represent the average political leaning of the members of Congress who cite the think tank. After discussing the scores with Tim Groseclose, we label scores of 40 or less as "conservative," scores between 40 and 59 as "neutral," and scores of 60 or greater as "liberal." In so doing, we remove two more undefined think tanks, National Center for Policy Analysis and Progressive Policy Institute. (8) The "nonpartisan" label is no longer available to the four think tanks so described by the press. One "centrist" think tank is changed to "liberal" (Urban) and two "liberal" think tanks are found to be neutral (Carnegie Endowment and Brookings).

We see a very different picture of the leanings of some these publications using this more objective measure of bias. None of these publications favor liberal think tanks, although the New York Times comes closest to giving them a full one-third share. The other two "liberal" press outlets actually gave the second highest share of citations to conservatives (behind neutrals). The Economist, which appeared to be "nonpartisan" using press labels for the think tanks, is voted "Least Likely to Quote a Liberal" in our study; although in fairness they and Foreign Affairs still lean most heavily toward neutral think tanks. Once again, USA Today comes closest to balanced reporting with a relatively small slight to the liberals.

Finally, whether it results from the nature of the publications that favor them or from the nature of the think tanks themselves, we note that the conservative think tanks appear by way of authored articles at a rate more than three times that of their peers (35 percent of conservative citations are authored articles). For the liberal and neutral think tanks, their scholars and research were directly mentioned by reporters and writers in 90 percent of their measured citations.

EVENT ANALYSIS

We began by mentioning the changes in the political and economic landscape that could have been the reason that the role of economic experts became more important in the last thirty years. Changes in citations for the top scholars around the time of the Asian crisis, a recession, and a Presidential election were examined in 2002 using annual counts. With the new database in monthly format, we can take a closer look at the idea that think tank scholars provide a valuable service to the public through their analysis and interpretation of events. For example, since 1997, the U.S. economy experienced one recession beginning in March 2001. In addition, also highly relevant to the economy, is the debate and passage of a major tax bill in the first half 2001. In either case, there were more citations in the early part of 2001 than around the September 11 terrorist attack. Indeed, scholar citations jumped in 2001 even above the long-term upward trend.

One might think that the increase in citations in 2001 could be due to the September 11 attacks, although our goal here is to measure the influence of economists, so that the economic events should be more important in this analysis. A closer look at 2001 shows a consistent increase in economist citations every year in September, possibly due to the federal fiscal cycle. Yet in 2001, there was no such increase. Rather, there was a slight rise in citations in March as the recession took hold and the House of Representatives marked up the tax bill.

Before concluding, we take another look at the political impact of the think tanks by measuring citations around the two Presidential elections that occurred during the study: 2000 and 2004. Laying the two election years against each other doesn't tell much except that there was more activity in 2004 than in 2000. In fact, if we plot those years against all other years, we see that 2004 citations are a little higher than "usual" and the 2000 citations are a little lower than "usual," although they trace a similar pattern.

To examine the election event, we show citations using the G&M ratings and the percentage of citations given to each category. What we see is that the two election years look very different. Citations from scholars at neutral think tanks took a decreasing share of the total in the months leading up to the 2000 conventions, while the opposite was true in 2004. In both events, the conservatives took an increasing share of citations as the election approached. Was the political dynamism seen in 2000 was moderated during the 2004 election out of respect for troops in combat? Conservatives, in particular, had a marked reduction in citations in July.

CONCLUSION

A range of competing advocacy think tanks might provide an extra dimension to policymaking procedures while avoiding the remoteness of academia. Alternatively, they may be viewed as a politically motivated group of elites bent on securing their own policy agendas. The reality, I'm sure, is somewhere in between where the legitimacy of think tanks reflects prevailing political conditions and preferences. Like them or not, think tanks will be with us for many years to come. There seems now to be global agreement that think tanks of various types are important and valid components of the policy making process.

As democracy spreads around the world, think tanks seem to follow. There is growing recognition in governmental, civil service, and university circles that the think tanks have a useful role to play in civil society. (9) There are about three hundred independent think tanks in the United States (depending on how "think tank" is defined) and another thousand connected to universities. The United Kingdom, with a fraction of the population, has nearly one hundred; there are 110 in Canada. In a democracy, the problems in society and government are openly reported and discussed thanks to freedom of the press. And that, ultimately is where think tanks meet media: as the interpreters of the facts reported by the media.

Authoring articles is another way to boost your ranking. Of course, maybe it doesn't hurt to have a scholar get a column in an important national publication, or even date a famous newscaster. Just don't worry that you'll be boosting my own citation count by mentioning these rankings. As a "free agent" rather than being in the employ of one of the listed think tanks, all those well-deserved citations of this study won't show up in the next Think Tank survey.

BRIEF COMMENTS ON DATA AND METHODOLOGY

The complete database used in this study will be available online at www.international-economy.com in tabdelimited format to encourage researchers to review their population-file details and submit updates and corrections.

The 2002 study used Dow Jones Interactive search for the Wall Street Journal, Asian Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Europe, Economist, and Business Week, and a LexisNexis search for the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, and Foreign Affairs. The explanation for using two databases was that "Dow Jones Interactive is more powerful for the business publications. ... LexisNexis has only abstracts for the Wall Street Journal, weekly listings for the Asian Wall Street Journal, and no listings for the Wall Street Journal Europe, but is much more powerful for publications such as the New York Times, USA Today, and International Herald Tribune."

Since that time, Dow Jones Interactive became known as Factiva and carries full coverage of the New York Times and USA Today, though still only selected coverage of the International Herald Tribune. For consistency, we use the same sources as 2002 for our search. The Los Angeles Times was added using LexisNexis, which provided superior results to Factiva for that publication.

Although it would seem that the next logical addition would be television appearances, they cannot be added to this study because there is no consistent source for all news program appearances. Although the newswires carry transcripts of many programs, including the names of the "talking head" appearances, they aren't up to the type of rigorous searching we require. Also, they are only recently available. For example, America's Intelligence Wire carries the transcripts of MSNBC programs like "Scarborough Country" beginning in January 1999. The International Wire, which also carries transcripts of news programs, became available in August 2003. Further, the full transcripts of the programs are posted to searchable news databases as one continuous document. Searching for the appearance of an economist's name with the think tank is generally futile, as they can occur in different contexts within the program yet be contained in the same transcript document.

Win, Place, and Show

Although Brookings continues to rank first overall, we see that they slipped behind the Institute for International Economics in 2004. The American Enterprise Institute has been consistently ranked third.

Most Improved

Cato Institute Urban Institute

Moving Up: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Progressive Policy Institute

Hudson Institute

Moving Down: National Center for Policy Analysis

Economic Strategy Institute

Council on Foreign Relations

The Perennials

Only Jared Bernstein, Gary Hufbauer, Fred Bergsten, and Bill Gale manage to maintain Top 10 rankings overall and in the individual years.

Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute

Gary Hufbauer, Institute for International Economics

Fred Bergsten, Institute for International Economics

Bill Gale, Brookings Institution

NOTES

(1.) An updated/corrected version of the rankings was subsequently posted at www.iie.org. In fact, we did not rely on the earlier results for our database. New results in this edition supersede previous editions.

(2.) The methodology employed in 2002 can be found online at http://www.iie.com/study/study.htm. A fuller description specific to the current study will be available at www.STPAdvisors.com.

(3.) The Milken institute was included in the 2000 survey but eliminated in 2002 for producing too few citations (less than 1 percent of the total).

(4.) In the working paper, I will attempt to create an unbiased selection process for think tank inclusion in the survey based on the number of articles that mention "economist" or "economics" in connection with the think tank's name. Hopefully, this will settle the question of which think tanks and scholars should be routinely included in the ranking.

(5.) Very few think tanks include hire dates in bios and not all personnel changes are reported in the press. The entry and exit dates are to the best of our knowledge correct.

(6.) Mr. Frey tells me, "No offense, but I'd rather not be identified as an economist. I'd lose my low-paying niche." Bill Frey is a demographer by training, profession and choice.

(7.) We have sixteen economists who spent at least twelve months at more than one think tank. The numbers are quite small and the differences are not large enough for statistical analysis. Nine of the movers increased their citations per month at the new think tank and seven moves resulted in decreased citation rates.

(8.) Although the loss of the two think tanks reduces the total number of citations being evaluated by 566, there are still 10,252 citations being analyzed.

(9.) James G. McGann and R. Kent Weaver (eds.). Think tanks and civil societies: catalysts for ideas and action (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000).

Susanne Trimbath, Ph.D., is Senior Research Economist (TIE rank 202) with STP Advisors in Santa Monica. The author wishes to thank Mattan Lurie, now with UBS London, for invaluable assistance on this project.

Rank the Tanks: Total Citations by Think Tank, 1997-2005

                                                     --Survey Rank--
                                          Citations  2005  2002  2000
Brookings Institution                       2,180     1     1     1
Institute for International Economics       1,621     2     2     2
American Enterprise Institute               1,351     3     3     3
Cato Institute                               873      4     4     5
Hoover Institution                           658      5     6     *
Economic Policy Institute                    634      6     5     6
Urban Institute                              577      7     8     8
Heritage Foundation                          548      8     7     7
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities       421      9     9     9
Carnegie Endowment for International         355      10    13    *
 Peace
Progressive Policy Institute                 346      11    15    12
Hudson Institute                             328      12    16    10
Milken Institute                             275      13          11
Center for Strategic and International       265      14    14    *
 Studies
Council on Foreign Relations                 259      15    12    *
National Center for Policy Analysis          220      16    10    *
Economic Strategy Institute                  184      17    11    4

* Not included in the ranking that year.

Who's Hot? Top Tank Ranks in Recent Years

                            Overall  2004  2003  2002  3-Year Average
Brookings Institution          1      2     1     1         1.3
Institute for                  2      1     2     2         1.7
 International Economics
American Enterprise            3      3     3     3         3.0
 Institute
Cato Institute                 4      4     6     14        8.0
Hoover Institution             5      6     4     5         5.0
Economic Policy Institute      6      5     5     6         5.3
Urban Institute                7      7     8     11        8.7
Heritage Foundation            8      8     10    9         9.0
Center on Budget and           9      11    7     4         7.3
 Policy Priorities
Carnegie Endowment for        10      10    11    13        11.3
 International Peace
Progressive Policy            11      9     12    9         10.0
 Institute
Hudson Institute              12      17    17    7         13.7
Milken Institute              13      15    15    8         12.7
Center for Strategic and      14      14    12    12        12.7
 International Studies
Council on Foreign            15      13    9     15        12.3
 Relations
National Center for           16      12    14    16        14.0
 Policy Analysis
Economic Strategy             17      16    16    17        16.3
 Institute

Super Stars: Top Thirty Think Tank Scholars Overall 1997-2005

Rank  Citations            Name               Think Tank(s)      2002
                                                                 Rank
 1       461         C. Fred Bergsten         Institute for       1
                                               International
                                                 Economics
 2       383       Robert D. Reischauer     Urban Institute &     3
                                                 Brookings
                                                Institution
 3       335         Robert E. Litan            Brookings         2
                                                Institution
 4       330        Marshall Wittmann       Progressive Policy    *
                                                Institute,
                                            Heritage Foundation
                                            & Hudson Institute
 5       294       Gary Clyde Hufbauer      Council on Foreign    11
                                                Relations &
                                               Institute for
                                               International
 6       292        Nicholas R. Lardy           Brookings         5
                                               Institution &
                                               Institute for
                                               International
                                                 Economics
 7       291         Jared Bernstein         Economic Policy      8
                                                 Institute
 8       255        James K. Glassman      American Enterprise    4
                                                 Institute
 9       217         William G. Gale            Brookings         13
                                                Institution
 10      215         Kevin A. Hassett      American Enterprise    7
                                                 Institute
 11      185        Will Marshall, III      Progressive Policy    19
                                                 Institute

 12      179          Stephen Moore           Cato Institute      *
 13      174         Morris Goldstein         Institute for       6
                                               International
                                                 Economics
 14      170         Peter R. Orszag            Brookings         #
                                                Institution
 15      163        Robert Greenstein        Center on Budget     14
                                                and Policy
                                                Priorities
 16      155          John H. Makin        American Enterprise    9
                                                 Institute
 17      154          Bruce Bartlett       National Center for    17
                                              Policy Analysis
 18      152     Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr.   Economic Strategy     12
                                                 Institute
 19      143         William H. Frey        Milken Institute &    #
                                                 Brookings
                                                Institution
 20      123        Nicholas Eberstadt     American Enterprise    22
                                                 Institute
 21      113            Bruce Katz              Brookings         16
                                                Institution
 22      111          Henry J. Aaron            Brookings         10
                                                Institution
 23      110          Ross C. DeVol          Milken Institute     #
 24      109        Michael D. Tanner         Cato Institute      23
 25      107           Marilyn Moon          Urban Institute      #
 26      104        C. Eugene Steuerle       Urban Institute      #
 27      101          Adam S. Posen           Institute for       14
                                               International
                                                 Economics
 28      98         Jeffrey J. Schott         Institute for       25
                                               International
                                                 Economics
 29      97             Benn Steil          Council on Foreign    28
                                                 Relations
 30      94        William A. Niskanen        Cato Institute      #

* These scholars were not included in 2002.

# These scholars were included in 2002 but ranked outside the Top 30

What Hare You Done Lately? Top Scholars in Recent Years,
2003 and 2004

Name                  Tank(s)                 Rank  Rank     Rank
                                              2004  2003  1997-2005 *
Jared Bernstein       Economic Policy          1     1         7
                       Institute
Peter R. Orszag       Brookings Institution    2     4        14
Gary Clyde Hufbauer   Council on Foreign       3     6         5
                       Relations & Institute
                       for International
                       Economics
C. Fred Bergsten      Institute for            4     2         1
                       International
                       Economics
Kevin A. Hassett      American Enterprise      5     5        10
                       Institute
Nicholas R. Lardy     Institute for            6     12        6
                       International
                       Economics & Brookings
                       Institution
William H. Frey       Milken Institute &       7     13       19
                       Brookings Institution
William G. Gale       Brookings Institution    8     3         9
Bruce Bartlett        National Center for      9     20       17
                       Policy Analysis
Catherine L. Mann     Institute for            10    62       34
                       International
                       Economics
Will Marshall, III    Progressive Policy       11    10       11
                       Institute
Daniel J. Mitchell    Heritage Foundation      12    23       35
Robert D. Reischauer  Urban Institute &        13    7         2
                       Brookings Institution
Claude E. Barfield    American Enterprise      13    55       45
                       Institute
James K. Glassman     American Enterprise      15    42        8
                       Institute
Chris Edwards         Cato Institute           16    30       50
Philip K. Verleger,   Council on Foreign       16    42       70
 Jr.                   Relations & Institute
                       for International
                       Economics
Robert Greenstein     Center on Budget and     18    9        15
                       Policy Priorities
Michael D. Tanner     Cato Institute           18   106       24
John H. Makin         American Enterprise      20    14       16
                       Institute
Alice Rivlin          Brookings Institution    25    15       40
Berlin Steil          Council on Foreign       39    8        29
                       Relations
Marcus Noland         Institute for            39    11       32
                       International
                       Economics
Clyde V. Prestowitz,  Economic Strategy        39    15       18
 Jr.                   Institute
Bruce Katz            Brookings Institution    42    19       21
Lawrence Mishel       Economic Policy          59    15       42
                       Institute
Nicholas Eberstadt    American Enterprise      59    18       20
                       Institute

* For all citations from January 1, 1997, through March 31, 2005

Leaning Towers of Ivory: Political Labels on the Think Tanks

                                              Press         G&M *
American Enterprise Institute              Conservative  Conservative
Brookings Institution                        Liberal       Neutral
Carnegie Endowment for International         Liberal       Neutral
 Peace
Cato Institute                             Conservative  Conservative
Center for Strategic and International     Nonpartisan     Neutral
 Studies
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities       Liberal       Liberal
Council on Foreign Relations               Nonpartisan     Liberal
Economic Policy Institute                    Liberal       Liberal
Economic Strategy Institute                Nonpartisan     Liberal
Heritage Foundation                        Conservative  Conservative
Hoover Institution                         Conservative  Conservative
Hudson Institute                           Conservative  Conservative
Institute for International Economics      Nonpartisan     Neutral
Milken Institute                            Undefined     Undefined
National Center for Policy Analysis        Conservative   Undefined
Progressive Policy Institute                 Centrist     Undefined
Urban Institute                              Centrist      Liberal

* These labels are based on the average Americans for Democratic
Action scores of the members of Congress who cite the think tanks,
as calculated in Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, "A Measure of
Media Bias," Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.

What's in a Name? Think Tank Citations by Press's Political Labels

               1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002
Conservative   360    351    438    476    581    517
Liberal        394    458    448    332    451    381
Nonpartisan    262    276    221    191    277    286
Centrist        92     60     84    144    126    103

               2003   2004   2005   Total   Share
Conservative   502    552    201    3,978    37%
Liberal        519    493    114    3,590    33%
Nonpartisan    381    372     63    2,329    22%
Centrist       138    134     42     923     9%

Who Talks to Whom--According to the Media's Own Bias Labels *

                          Conservative  Liberal  Nonpartisan  Centrist
Wall Street Journal           50%         19%        26%         4%
 Europe
Wall Street Journal           49%         26%        18%         7%
 (New York)
Business Week                 46%         32%        13%         9%
Asian Wall Street             46%         20%        31%         3%
 Journal
USA Today                     37%         36%        14%        13%
New York Times                30%         46%        15%        10%
Washington Post               35%         39%        16%        10%
Los Angeles Times             30%         35%        23%        12%
Foreign Affairs               16%         28%        54%         1%
International Herald          34%         23%        42%         2%
 Tribune
Economist                     24%         33%        38%         5%
Financial Times               28%         30%        36%         6%
All                          36.8%       33.2%      21.5%       8.5%

* Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding.

Who Talks to Whom-According to the G&M Labels *

                                Conservative  Liberal  Neutral
Wall Street Journal Europe          50%         11%      39%
Business Week                       48%         12%      39%
Wall Street Journal (New York)      47%         17%      36%
Asian Wall Street Journal           46%         11%      43%
USA Today                           38%         26%      37%
Foreign Affairs                     17%         15%      68%
Economist                           25%         10%      65%
International Herald Tribune        33%         14%      54%
Financial Times                     28%         20%      52%
Los Angeles Times                   31%         24%      45%
Washington Post                     35%         22%      42%
New York Times                      29%         29%      42%

* Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding.