The Global Spread of Think Tanks and Economic Freedom

Only a few countries had free market think tanks prior to 1980. Today, there are nearly 500 such think tanks operating in nearly 100 countries. We examine the role that these think tanks played in the sizeable increase in economic freedom around the gobe that has occurred over the last forty years. We find that aggregate think tank years is associated with larger increases a country's economic freedom scores over five- and ten-year periods.