AEI's research is divided into seven broad categories: economic policy studies, foreign and defense policy studies, health care policy studies, political and public opinion studies, social and cultural studies, education, and poverty studies.
Economic policy studies Economic policy was the original focus of the American Enterprise Association, and "the Institute still keeps economic policy studies at its core". According to AEI's annual report, "The principal goal is to better understand free economies—how they function, how to capitalize on their strengths, how to keep private enterprise robust, and how to address problems when they arise".
Michael R. Strain directs economic policy studies at AEI. Throughout the beginning of the 21st-century, AEI staff have pushed for a more conservative approach to aiding the recession that includes major tax cuts. In 2002,
John H. Makin, an AEI resident scholar, published a report supporting President Bush’s tax cuts, writing that the cuts "played a large role in helping to save the economy from a recession". In the report, Makin suggested that further taxes were necessary in order to attain recovery of the economy and that Democrats in Congress who opposed the Bush stimulus plan were foolish for doing so.
2008 financial crisis As the
2008 financial crisis unfolded,
The Wall Street Journal stated that predictions by AEI staff about the involvement of
housing GSEs had come true. In the late 1990s,
Fannie Mae eased credit requirements on the mortgages it purchased and exposed itself to more risk.
Peter J. Wallison warned that Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac's public-private status put taxpayers on the line for increased risk. "Because of the agencies' dual public and private form, various efforts to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fulfill their public mission at the cost of their profitability have failed—and will likely continue to fail", he wrote in 2001. "The only viable solution would seem to be full privatization or the adoption of policies that would force the agencies to adopt this course themselves." In 2006, Wallison moderated a conference featuring
James B. Lockhart III, the chief regulator of Fannie and Freddie. In August 2008, after Fannie and Freddie had been backstopped by the
US Treasury Department, Wallison outlined several ways of dealing with the GSEs, including "nationalization through a receivership," outright "privatization," and "privatization through a receivership." The following month, Lockhart and Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson took the former path by putting Fannie and Freddie into federal "
conservatorship." As the housing crisis unfolded, AEI sponsored a series of conferences featuring commentators including
Desmond Lachman, and
Nouriel Roubini. Makin had been warning about the effects of a housing downturn on the broader economy for months. Amid charges that many homebuyers did not understand their complex
mortgages, Alex J. Pollock crafted a prototype of a one-page mortgage disclosure form. The claim that AEI predicted and warned about the
2008 financial crisis is heavily disputed. In her book,
Dark Money (2016), American investigative journalist
Jane Mayer writes that contrary to their claims, AEI took the "lead role" in crafting a revisionist narrative about the financial crisis, promoting what equities analyst
Barry Ritholtz called "Wall Street's 'big lie'". AEI's argument, "that government programs that helped low-income home buyers get mortgages caused the collapse", did not "withstand even casual scrutiny", according to Ritholz. Multiple studies, including those from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies and the
U.S. Government Accountability Office, did not support the conclusions about mortgages reached by AEI. Ritholz argues that AEI intentionally shifted the blame from the financial sector, many of whom worked or were affiliated with AEI, according to Mayer, to the government and the consumer, so as to continue promoting the questionable idea that the free market does not need regulation.
Tax and fiscal policy Kevin Hassett and Alan D. Viard are AEI's principal tax policy experts, although Alex Brill,
R. Glenn Hubbard, and Aparna Mathur also work on the subject. Specific subjects include "
income distribution, transition costs, marginal tax rates, and international taxation of corporate income... the
Pension Protection Act of 2006; dynamic scoring and the effects of taxation on investment, savings, and entrepreneurial activity; and options to fix the
alternative minimum tax". Hassett has coedited several volumes on tax reform. Viard edited a book on tax policy lessons from the
Bush administration. AEI's
working paper series includes developing academic works on economic issues. One paper by Hassett and Mathur on the responsiveness of wages to
corporate taxation was cited by
The Economist; figures from another paper by Hassett and Brill on maximizing corporate income tax revenue was cited by
The Wall Street Journal.
Center for Regulatory and Market Studies From 1998 to 2008, the Reg-Markets Center was the AEI-
Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, directed by Robert W. Hahn. The center, which no longer exists, sponsored conferences, papers, and books on regulatory decision-making and the impact of federal regulation on consumers, businesses, and governments. It covered a range of disciplines. It also sponsored an annual Distinguished Lecture series. Past lecturers in the series have included
William Baumol, Supreme Court Justice
Stephen Breyer,
Alfred Kahn,
Sam Peltzman,
Richard Posner, and
Cass Sunstein. Research in AEI's Financial Markets Program also includes banking, insurance and
securities regulation,
accounting reform,
corporate governance, and consumer finance.
Energy and environmental policy AEI's work on
climate change has been subject to controversy. Some AEI staff and fellows have been critical of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international scientific body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. According to AEI, it "emphasizes the need to design environmental policies that protect not only nature but also democratic institutions and human liberty". In an essay from the AEI outlook series of 2007, the authors discuss the Kyoto Protocol and state that the United States "should be wary of joining an international emissions-trading regime". To back this statement, they point out that committing to the Kyoto emissions goal would be a significant and unrealistic obligation for the United States. In addition, they state that the Kyoto regulations would have an impact not only on governmental policies, but also the private sector through expanding government control over investment decisions. AEI staff said that "dilution of sovereignty" would be the result if the U.S. signed the treaty. In February 2007, a number of sources, including the British newspaper
The Guardian, reported that the AEI had offered scientists $10,000 plus travel expenses and additional payments, asking them to dispute the
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. This offer was criticized as
bribery. The letters alleged that the IPCC was "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent, and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and asked for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs". In 2007,
The Guardian reported that the AEI received $1.6 million in funding from
ExxonMobil, and further notes that former ExxonMobil CEO
Lee R. Raymond is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees. This story was repeated by
Newsweek, which drew criticism from its contributing editor
Robert J. Samuelson because "this accusation was long ago discredited, and
Newsweek shouldn't have lent it respectability."
The Guardian article was disputed in a
The Wall Street Journal editorial. The editorial stated: "AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question
global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon." In 2007, AEI scholars published a report promoting
carbon taxation as an alternative to
cap-and-trade regimes. "Most economists believe a carbon tax (a tax on the quantity of CO2 emitted when using energy) would be a superior policy alternative to an emissions-trading regime," wrote Kenneth P. Green, Kevin Hassett, and
Steven F. Hayward. "In fact, the irony is that there is a broad consensus in favor of a carbon tax everywhere except on Capitol Hill, where the 'T word' is anathema." AEI also backs the carbon taxation policy due to an incentive to reduce the use of
carbon-intensive energy that would result. "The increased costs of energy would flow through the economy, ultimately giving consumers incentives to reduce their use of electricity, transportation fuels, home heating oil, and so forth". Along with consumers reducing their use of carbon-energy, they will be inclined to buy more efficient appliances, cars, and homes that apply "more attention to energy conservation". Other AEI staff have argued for similar policies. Thernstrom and Lane codirected a project on whether
geoengineering would be a feasible way to "buy us time to make [the] transition [from fossil fuels] while protecting us from the worst potential effects of warming". Green, who departed AEI in 2013, expanded its work on
energy policy. He has hosted conferences on
nuclear power and
ethanol With Aparna Mathur, he evaluated Americans' indirect energy use to discover unexpected areas in which
energy efficiencies can be achieved. In October 2007, resident scholar and executive director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies Robert W. Hahn commented: AEI visiting scholar
N. Gregory Mankiw wrote in
The New York Times in support of a
carbon tax on September 16, 2007. He remarked that "there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it." After
Energy Secretary Steven Chu recommended painting roofs and roads white in order to reflect sunlight back into space and therefore reduce global warming, AEI's magazine
The American endorsed the idea. It also stated that "ultimately we need to look more broadly at creative ways of reducing the harmful effects of climate change in the long run."
The American editor-in-chief and fellow Nick Schulz endorsed a carbon tax over a cap and trade program in
The Christian Science Monitor on February 13, 2009. He stated that it "would create a market price for carbon emissions and lead to emissions reductions or new technologies that cut greenhouse gases." Former scholar Steven Hayward has described efforts to reduce global warming as being "based on exaggerations and conjecture rather than science". He has stated that "even though the leading scientific journals are thoroughly imbued with environmental correctness and reject out of hand many articles that don't conform to the party line, a study that confounds the conventional wisdom is published almost every week". Likewise, former AEI scholar Kenneth Green has referred to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as "the positively silly idea of establishing global-weather control by actively managing the atmosphere's greenhouse-gas emissions", and endorsed
Michael Crichton's novel
State of Fear for having "educated millions of readers about climate science".
Christopher DeMuth, former AEI president, accepted that the Earth has warmed in recent decades, but he stated that "it's not clear why this happened" and charged as well that the IPCC "has tended to ignore many distinguished physicists and meteorologists whose work casts doubt on the influence of greenhouse gases on global temperature trends". Fellow James Glassman also disputes the
scientific consensus on climate change, having written numerous articles criticizing the Kyoto accords and climate science more generally for
Tech Central Station. He supported the views of U.S. Senator
Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who claims that "global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,'" and, like Green, cites Crichton's novel
State of Fear, which "casts serious doubt on global warming and extremists who espouse it". Joel Schwartz, an AEI visiting fellow, stated: "The Earth has indeed warmed during the last few decades and may warm further in the future. But the pattern of climate change is not consistent with the
greenhouse effect being the main cause." In 2013, the magazine of the UK's
Institute of Economic Affairs published an article by AEI fellow
Roger Bate entitled "20 years denouncing eco-militants", in which he argued that "evidence of climate impact is still hard to prove, and harm even more difficult to establish", and dismissed calls for a ban on the
insecticide DDT as "green alarmism". In 2018, British investigative website
openDemocracy repeated that AEI "has long been funded by ExxonMobile",
Foreign and defense policy studies AEI's foreign and defense policy studies researchers focus on "how political and economic freedom—as well as American interests—are best promoted around the world". In 2015, AEI gave Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu its
Irving Kristol Award. AEI's foreign and defense policy studies department, directed by
Danielle Pletka, is the part of the institute most commonly associated with neoconservatism.
Joshua Muravchik and
Michael Ledeen (the latter seen as an "ultra neo-conservative") spent many years at AEI, although they departed at around the same time as
Reuel Marc Gerecht in 2008 in what was rumored to be a "purge" of neoconservatives at the institute, possibly "signal[ing] the end of [neoconservatism's] domination over the think tank over the past several decades", although Muravchik later said it was the result of personality and management conflicts.
U.S. national security strategy, defense policy, and the "surge" In late 2006, the security situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, and the
Iraq Study Group proposed a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops and further engagement of Iraq's neighbors. Consulting with AEI's Iraq Planning Group,
Frederick W. Kagan published an AEI report entitled
Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq calling for "phase one" of a change in strategy to focus on "clearing and holding" neighborhoods and securing the population; a troop escalation of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments; and a renewed emphasis on reconstruction, economic development, and jobs. While the report was being drafted, Kagan and Keane were briefing President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other senior Bush administration officials behind the scenes. According to
Bob Woodward, "Peter Schoomaker|[Peter J.] Schoomaker was outraged when he saw news coverage that retired Gen.
Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, had briefed the president on December 11 about a new Iraq strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, the
conservative think tank. 'When does AEI start trumping the
Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?' Schoomaker asked at the next chiefs' meeting." Kagan, Keane, and Senators
John McCain and
Joseph Lieberman presented the plan at a January 5, 2007, event at AEI. Bush announced the
change of strategy on January 10. Kagan authored three subsequent reports monitoring the progress of the surge. AEI's defense policy researchers, who also include Schmitt and
Giselle Donnelly, also work on issues related to the
U.S. military forces' size and structure and military partnerships with allies (both bilaterally and through institutions such as
NATO). Schmitt directs AEI's Program on Advanced Strategic Studies, which "analyzes the long-term issues that will impact America's security and its ability to lead internationally". Blumenthal and his team wrote several articles for
ForeignPolicy.com and other outlets during the Obama presidency advocating for military support and funding for Taiwan. Papers in AEI's Tocqueville on China Project series "elicit the underlying civic culture of post-
Mao China, enabling policymakers to better understand the internal forces and pressures that are shaping China's future". AEI's Europe program was previously housed under the auspices of the
New Atlantic Initiative, which was directed by
Radek Sikorski before his return to Polish politics in 2005. Leon Aron's work forms the core of the institute's program on Russia. AEI staff tend to view Russia as posing "strategic challenges for the West".
Roger Noriega's focuses at AEI are on Venezuela,
Brazil, the
Mérida Initiative with Mexico and
Central America, and hemispheric relations. AEI has historically devoted significant attention to the
Middle East, especially through the work of former resident scholars Ledeen and Muravchik. Pletka's research focus also includes the Middle East, and she coordinated a conference series on empowering democratic dissidents and advocates in the Arab World. In 2009, AEI launched the
Critical Threats Project, led by Kagan, to "highlight the complexity of the global challenges the United States faces with a primary focus on Iran and al Qaeda's global influence". with contributions from Ali Alfoneh, Ahmad Majidyar and
Michael Rubin, among others.
International organizations and economic development For several years, AEI and the
Federalist Society cosponsored
NGOWatch, which was later subsumed into Global Governance Watch, "a web-based resource that addresses issues of transparency and accountability in the
United Nations,
NGOs, and related international organizations". and
John Yoo, who researches
international law and sovereignty. and
Edward Banfield published a booklet on the theory behind foreign aid in 1970. Since 2001, AEI has sponsored the Henry Wendt Lecture in International Development, named for Henry Wendt, an AEI trustee emeritus and former CEO of
SmithKline Beckman.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair, focusing on
demographics,
population growth and human capital development; he served on the federal HELP Commission.
Roger Bate focuses his research on
malaria,
HIV/AIDS,
counterfeit and substandard drugs, access to water, and other problems endemic in the developing world.
Health policy studies AEI scholars have engaged in health policy research since the institute's early days. A Center for Health Policy Research was established in 1974. For many years, Robert B. Helms led the health department. AEI's long-term focuses in health care have included
national insurance,
Medicare,
Medicaid,
pharmaceutical innovation, health care competition, and cost control. Since 2003, AEI has published the
Health Policy Outlook series on new developments in U.S. and international health policy. AEI also published
A Better Prescription in February 2010 to outline their ideal plan to healthcare reform, calling for putting the money and control in the hands of the consumers and continuing the market-based system of healthcare, a form of healthcare that "relies on financial incentives rather than central direction and control." According to
openDemocracy, "In the late 1990s, while he was funded by the tobacco industry, AEI fellow Roger Bate argued against the science which shows that exposure to tobacco causes cancer."
Scott Gottlieb, also a medical doctor, rejoined AEI after a term as commissioner with the
Food and Drug Administration. He has expressed concern about relatively unreliable
comparative effectiveness research being used to restrict treatment options under a public plan.
Roger Bate's work includes international health policy, especially pharmaceutical quality, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and multilateral health organizations.
Paul Ryan, then-minority point man for health care in the House of Representatives, delivered the keynote address at a 2009 AEI conference on mandated universal coverage, insurance exchanges, the public plan option, medical practice and treatment, and revenue to cover federal health care costs. In 2004, as
Purdue Pharma, a company known as the maker of
OxyContin, one of the many drugs abused in the
opioid epidemic in the United States, was facing a threat to its sales due to rising lawsuits against it, resident fellow
Sally Satel wrote an op ed for the
New York Times. She commented, “When you scratch the surface of someone who is addicted to painkillers, you usually find a seasoned drug abuser with a previous habit involving pills, alcohol, heroin or cocaine. Contrary to media portrayals, the typical OxyContin addict does not start out as a pain patient who fell unwittingly into a drug habit.”
Legal and constitutional studies The
AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest, formed in 2007 from the merger of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, houses all legal and constitutional research at AEI. The institute was influential in the
law and economics movement in the 1970s and 1980s with the publication of
Regulation magazine and AEI Press books.
Robert Bork published
The Antitrust Paradox with AEI support. Other jurists, legal scholars, and constitutional scholars who have conducted research at AEI include
Walter Berns,
Richard Epstein,
Bruce Fein,
Robert Goldwin,
Antonin Scalia, The AEI Legal Center sponsors the annual Gauer Distinguished Lecture in Law and Public Policy. Past lecturers include
Stephen Breyer,
George H. W. Bush,
Christopher Cox,
Douglas Ginsburg,
Anthony Kennedy,
Sandra Day O'Connor,
Colin Powell,
Ronald Reagan,
William Rehnquist,
Condoleezza Rice,
Margaret Thatcher, and
William H. Webster.
Ted Frank, the director of the AEI Legal Center, focuses on
liability law and
tort reform.
Michael S. Greve focuses on constitutional law and
federalism, including
federal preemption. According to
Jonathan Rauch, in 2005, Greve convened "a handful of free-market activists and litigators met in a windowless 11th-floor conference room at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington" in opposition to the legality of the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. "By the time the meeting finished, the participants had decided to join forces and file suit... . No one paid much attention. But the yawning stopped on May 18, [2009,] when the Supreme Court announced it will hear the case."
Political and public opinion studies AEI's research program has published studies on political processes and institutions since the 1970s. The AEI Press published a series of several dozen volumes in the 1970s and 1980s called "At the Polls"; in each volume, AEI's researchers assess a country's recent presidential or parliamentary election. In the early 1980s, AEI researchers were commissioned by the U.S. government to monitor
plebiscites in
Palau, the
Federated States of Micronesia, and the
Marshall Islands. Ornstein led a working group that drafted the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. AEI published
Public Opinion magazine from 1978 to 1990 under the editorship of
Seymour Martin Lipset and
Ben Wattenberg, assisted by Karlyn Bowman. The institute's work on polling continues with public opinion features in
The American Enterprise and
The American and Bowman's AEI Studies in Public Opinion.
Social and cultural studies AEI's social and cultural studies program dates to the 1970s, when
William J. Baroody Sr., invited
Irving Kristol and
Michael Novak to take up residence at AEI. Since then, AEI has sponsored research on various issues, including education, religion, race and gender, and social welfare. Supported by the
Bradley Foundation, AEI has hosted since 1989 the Bradley Lecture Series. Notable speakers in the series have included Kristol, Novak,
Allan Bloom,
Robert Bork,
David Brooks,
Lynne Cheney,
Ron Chernow,
Tyler Cowen,
Niall Ferguson,
Francis Fukuyama,
Eugene Genovese,
Robert P. George,
Gertrude Himmelfarb,
Samuel P. Huntington,
Paul Johnson,
Leon Kass,
Charles Krauthammer,
Bernard Lewis,
Seymour Martin Lipset,
Harvey C. Mansfield,
Michael Medved,
Allan H. Meltzer,
Edmund Morris,
Charles Murray,
Steven Pinker,
Norman Podhoretz,
Richard Posner,
Jonathan Rauch,
Andrew Sullivan,
Cass Sunstein,
Sam Tanenhaus,
James Q. Wilson,
John Yoo, and
Fareed Zakaria.
Education Education policy studies at AEI are directed by
Frederick M. Hess. Hess co-directs AEI's Future of American Education Project, whose working group includes Washington, D.C. schools chancellor
Michelle Rhee and Michael Feinberg, the cofounder of
KIPP. AEI is a national allied organization of the
American Federation for Children founded in 2010 by
Dick and
Betsy DeVos of the DeVos Family Foundation. The AEI were supportive of
Betsy DeVos' positions when she served under
Donald Trump as Education Secretary in 2017-21. Hess supported her plan to gut the Borrower Defense Rule, that enables defrauded students to seek debt relief. In a
National Review op-ed, Hess praised DeVos’ proposal to base
debt forgiveness on student income as “clearly better for colleges, taxpayers, and students”. In a 2024 report co-authored with
The Heritage Foundation, AEI argued that higher education institutions should not give faculty stipends to join or attend conferences of professional organizations because these groups make statements on political issues. ==Funding==