A DEFENDER OF FREEDOM, OPPORTUNITY & ENTERPRISE The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars, staff, and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these unchanging ideals through independent thinking, open debate, reasoned argument, and the highest standards of fact-based research. Without regard for politics or prevailing fashion, we dedicate our work to a more prosperous, safer, and more democratic nation and world. Located in Washington, DC, AEI is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization. The Institute does not take institutional positions on any issues. We are supported by private donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations. AEI does not accept government funding and does not perform contract research. For more information about AEI, visit our website, www.AEI.org. AEI SCHOLARS TELEVISION AND AND STAFF RADIO APPEARANCES 225 2,465 CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONIES OP-EDS IN MAJOR IN THE 113TH CONGRESS PRINT MEDIA (JANUARY 3, 2013 – JANUARY 3, 2015) 3,385 89 FOLLOWERS ON AEI'S SOCIAL SUMMER INTERNSHIP MEDIA ACCOUNTS APPLICATIONS YOUTUBE, TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK 6,794 243,800 DONORS FY 2015 ANNUAL REVENUE 1,380 $54.6M *Numbers are for calendar year 2015 (unless otherwise noted) and are as of November 2015. DEBATING POVERTY On May 12, Arthur Brooks participated in a panel on poverty with President Obama at Georgetown University. The panel, which also featured Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and was moderated by the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, debated the best ways to address chronic poverty. Robert Doar and W. Bradford Wilcox participated in a separate panel at the same event. The summit earned widespread media coverage, including by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and National Public Radio. 2016 ELECTION AEI scholars organized predebate forums at the sites of Republican and Democratic US presidential debates in Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Boulder. They discussed the need for a conservative message that speaks to voters’ hearts and minds, the country’s demographic shifts, and the economic challenges facing the nation. IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL In the month following the announcement of the Iran nuclear deal on July 14, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin, Matthew McInnis, Marc Thiessen, Frederick Kagan, and John Bolton gave more than 50 radio and 30 television interviews on the outlines of the “comprehensive” nuclear deal with Iran. Additionally, in well over 50 op-eds and blogs posts, the team warned that the terms of the deal are likely to enable rather than halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development. Kagan launched a new mini-website on AEI’s Critical Threats Project’s Iran Tracker site to clarify the agreement’s complex language and to provide additional information (www.irantracker.org). CONTENTS ECONOMIC POLICY STUDIES 02 POVERTY STUDIES 04 HEALTH POLICY STUDIES 07 EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES 08 SOCIETY AND CULTURE 10 POLITICS AND PUBLIC OPINION 11 FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES 12 OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATIONS 14 / IV / MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT programs, we have more than 5,300 student envoys on more than 600 campuses in our network. AEI is also developing young business leaders across the nation, empowering them to help spread our ideas and improve public policy. Meanwhile, AEI’s in-house media team is bringing our free enterprise ideas to new audiences. Our scholars continue to dominate the opinion pages of the country’s most read publications and make thousands of television and radio President Arthur C. Brooks and Chairman Tully M. Friedman appearances on the nation’s most influential programs. On the digital “The competition of ideas is debates on a wide range of public front, our AEIdeas blog remains a fundamental to a free society.” policy issues, including economics, leading destination for analysis that health care, education, politics and combines policy, politics, and news. William J. Baroody Sr., one of public opinion, and foreign and Our popularity on social media sites AEI’s early presidents, coined this defense policy. Moreover, we have such as Facebook, Twitter, and phrase in the 1960s. At the time, the added new scholars and fellows, YouTube is growing rapidly. message was subversive. Baroody including in crucial new areas such believed that ideas, like economies, as poverty alleviation. To carry out this work, we depend must not be controlled by central on you, our steadfast community of planners and government elites. At the same time, we have massively supporters, who agree that investing Rather, American vibrancy required broadened our communications in ideas is vital for the future of bottom-up intellectual diversity and presence to ensure that our our world. Thank you for trusting a true competition of ideas that scholars’ ideas have the maximum us with your resources in the fight included independent institutions possible impact. Across all AEI’s for our shared values. In addition such as AEI. research areas, we are actively to a record amount of funds to injecting our work into the most support our work this past year, our History has vindicated Baroody’s important policy debates of the day generous community also helped us vision of America—and of AEI. and disseminating that work to the raise more than $99 million toward We have never wavered from leaders who are best placed to act. our capital campaign goal. our mission to promote vigorous We have expanded our outreach to debate and deliver the best ideas policymakers on both sides of the We hope you are proud of the work to policymakers, business leaders, aisle, and AEI scholars continue to you have made possible over the journalists, and students. We do testify more often before Congress past year. We are deeply optimistic this to protect liberty and expand than any peer organization. about what we can achieve together opportunity and enterprise in in the months and years ahead. America and around the world. We are also cultivating the next generation of free enterprise leaders. The past year—AEI’s 78th fighting AEI is working to make our core Tully M. Friedman for these timeless principles—has ideas as prevalent on campuses Chairman been the most active in our history. and business communities as they As you will see in these pages, we are on Capitol Hill. Three years Arthur C. Brooks have played a leading role in key after launching our academic President / 1 / ECONOMIC POLICY STUDIES ACCELERATING ECONOMIC RECOVERY Part of AEI’s core mission is the preservation and promotion of free market economies in the United States and around the world. AEI’s Economic Policy team consists of leading scholars who are researching the most crucial issues challenging our economy today and proposing a range of innovative solutions designed to reform America’s systems and accelerate its economic recovery. AEI scholars study the national budget, monetary policy, tax and entitlement reform, financial markets regulation, and international trade and finance. z Peter Wallison wrote a second z Kevin Hassett, with coauthor book on the financial crisis,Hidden Alan Auerbach, wrote an incisive in Plain Sight: What Really Caused critique of the data, theory, and the World’s Worst Financial Crisis policy conclusions in Thomas and Why It Could Happen Again Piketty’s prominent book Capital (Encounter Books, January 2015). in the Twenty-First Century. The Wallison was interviewed by paper, which was published in the dozens of media outlets about American Economic Review in May, the book—including Fox News, was presented at the American CNN, and CNBC. Economic Association conference in January and has been cited by outlets including Forbes, Tax Notes, and PBS. WEALTH BUILDING HOME LOAN In 2014, Edward Pinto and Stephen Oliner created the Wealth Building Home Loan (WBHL), a new approach for banks to provide homebuyers a more reliable and effective means of building wealth while maintaining buying power similar to a 30-year loan. The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), in conjunction with the Bank of America, has decided to incorporate the WBHL concept into its low-income lending program in NACA’s 40-plus offices nationwide. / 2 / NEW SCHOLARS Benedic Ippolito joined AEI as a research fellow to focus on the economics of health care policy, with a special focus on the behavior of health care providers. He has been investigating how changes in financial incentives influence hospital care and how alternative compensation models influence the behavior of physicians and the way they treat patients. Vincent Reinhart rejoined AEI as z In March, AEI’s Open Source a visiting scholar after stepping Policy Center, led by Matt Jensen, down as Morgan Stanley’s chief released to beta users the first-ever US economist. Reinhart is a former open-source static scoring model director of the Federal Reserve for US tax policy analysis. This Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs, model and its online interface will where he worked on domestic and allow users to analyze the effects of international aspects of US monetary policies for themselves. policy at the Fed for more than two decades. z In May, Joseph Antos, Andrew Biggs, Alex Brill, and Alan Viard published a paper titled Tax and Wendell L. Willkie II joined AEI Spending Reform for Fiscal Stability as a visiting fellow to focus on the and Economic Growth for the governance of America’s public Peterson Foundation’s Solutions companies, the responsibilities Initiative, which Viard presented of corporate boards, and the on a bipartisan panel at the 2015 significance of shareholder activism Fiscal Summit. The paper proposed and engagement. Willkie has had a a plan to fix America’s debt and distinguished career in government, restore long-term fiscal stability to having served in various positions at the country.