Working With the American Institute For Economic Research: A Practical Guide
If you are researching free-market policy sources or looking for peer-reviewed economic analysis without the usual advocacy spin, the American Institute For Economic Research is one of the better options out there. Most people encounter it through their Economic Freedom Index work or their podcast content, but the actual research library is where the real material lives if you know where to look. I first started using their publications back in 2018 when I was compiling data on state-level tax policy reforms for a consulting project. Their state-level reports tend to be more granular than what you get from the Heritage Foundation, which is saying something given that most people stop at Cato or AEI. The AIER team digs into municipal and county level data that larger think tanks just gloss over.
American Institute For Economic Research Research Materials
Here is how you actually get access to their primary research documents. Go to their website and navigate to the research or publications section. The main repository is organized by topic rather than chronologically, which initially seems inconvenient until you realize it saves time. Their topics run from entrepreneurship and small business policy through monetary policy, tax reform, and education. Each publication has a PDF download link, and they also maintain a subscription newsletter that aggregates new releases. The download process is straightforward. No paywall, no registration required for the bulk of their content. Just click the link on any publication and the PDF opens directly. I have downloaded probably two dozen papers over the years this way. The file sizes are reasonable, usually under a megabyte each, and the formatting is consistent enough that cross-referencing between papers is easy. One thing most beginners miss is that their methodology documents are often more valuable than the findings themselves. When they publish an index or an analysis, the accompanying methodology section explains exactly how they weight variables and source their data. I learned this the hard way during a project where I was comparing multiple economic freedom rankings across states. The AIER methodology differs from Heritage's in meaningful ways, particularly around the treatment of regulatory burden at the local level. If you ignore the methodology notes and just quote their numbers, you will end up misrepresenting their work. I caught this error about six months into that project after realizing my comparison charts didn't align with what other researchers were publishing using the same data sets. The fix was going back and reading every methodology appendix for both AIER and Heritage across all the years I was comparing, then adjusting my normalization calculations accordingly. It took me about three extra hours of work but saved the analysis from being fundamentally flawed.
Another practical detail: their podcast transcripts are publicly available and often contain discussions that go beyond what appears in the written papers. The researchers interviewed there sometimes reveal data limitations or caveats they leave out of the formal publications. I have used those podcast conversations to verify whether a particular finding had been discussed with the authors before citing it. It is a small step that prevents embarrassing attribution errors down the line. There are also limitations worth noting upfront. Their sample size of researchers is comparatively small, which means their coverage areas are uneven. They have strong output on entrepreneurship and small business policy but relatively thin coverage on international trade or macroeconomic forecasting. If you are building a comprehensive literature review on, say, central bank policy, you will need to supplement their work with Federal Reserve publications or academic journals. Their output quality remains solid in their core areas, but depth is not uniform across all topics they touch. Another issue is citation practices among their own publications. Because some of their older papers from the late 1990s and early 2000s use slightly different measurement methodologies, direct year-over-year comparisons can be misleading without adjusting for the methodological shift. Their newer publications acknowledge this, but older ones do not always make it clear. When working with data from before 2010, I recommend checking the methodology notes carefully and contacting their research team if the documentation is unclear. They are generally responsive to substantive inquiries, though response times can stretch to a week or so during busy periods.
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For the best results, I suggest starting with their most recent publications and working backward. The organization has grown considerably since its founding in 1953, and the quality and rigor of their research has improved alongside that growth. The earlier work is still useful but reflects the economic thinking and data standards of its era, which means some conclusions may need updating rather than direct application to current policy debates. If you need a starting point for familiarizing yourself with their approach, their publication on economic freedom in U.S. states provides a reasonable entry point. It is accessible, well-organized, and representative of their general methodology. From there you can branch into whichever subtopics matter for your particular research question.
