American Enterprise Institute

Address of Organization

1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 USA www.aei.org

Introduction

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) describes itself as one of America's “oldest and most respected think tanks.” AEI is primarily dedicated to education and research on governmental issues such as politics, social welfare, and economics. It promotes fact-finding, empirical research on public policy topics that are distributed to various government officials, business executives, academics, and journalist across the United States.

Brief History

Founded in 1943 during World War II, the American Enterprise Association (AEA) started out as a partnership between prominent policy experts (e.g., Roscoe Pound, Henry Hazlitt, Raymond Moley) and executives from the business and financial communities (e.g., Bristol-Myers, General Mills, Chemical Bank). From the beginning, the Washington, DC-based association was libertarian and conservative, but had a commitment to being nonpartisan,...