Research and Policy Institutes

Research and policy institutes are the upstream end of the intervention pipeline. They produce the empirical evidence that makes a case credible, the design specifications that make it implementable, and the credentialing infrastructure that makes it politically defensible. This page surveys the most active institutes in the wealth-and-power-concentration space, weighted toward those that produce primary research rather than commentary.

The most influential cluster sits at the intersection of academic economics and policy. The Paris School of Economics’ World Inequality Lab (WIL), founded by Piketty, Saez, Zucman, Chancel and colleagues, produces the underlying data (World Inequality Database) that nearly every other organization on this page cites. The International Tax Observatory (formerly EU Tax Observatory, rebranded February 2026; Zucman’s Paris/Berkeley-affiliated outfit) produces the annual Global Tax Evasion Report and is the analytic engine behind the billionaire-minimum-tax proposal. Tax Justice Network (London-based, founded March 2003) bridges research and advocacy and originated the corporate tax haven and financial secrecy indexes.

In the U.S., Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) produces the annual Billionaire Bonanza reports and the Inequality.org clearinghouse; Economic Policy Institute (EPI) produces the State of Working America series and the most cited U.S. wage-decile time series; Roosevelt Institute has been the primary U.S. publisher of New Brandeisian antitrust work; and Washington Center for Equitable Growth (founded 2013) funds academic research on the inequality-growth relationship. Stone Center for Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY houses the U.S. satellite office of the LIS Cross-National Data Center (headquartered in Luxembourg) and the Stone wealth-inequality research program.

Institute inventory

Institute	Geography	Focus
World Inequality Lab (PSE)	Paris	Inequality data, top shares, theory
International Tax Observatory (formerly EU Tax Observatory)	Paris	Tax evasion, billionaire taxation, offshore
Tax Justice Network	London	Tax havens, financial secrecy, transparency
Institute for Policy Studies	Washington DC	U.S. wealth concentration, Inequality.org
Economic Policy Institute	Washington DC	U.S. labor, wages, unions
Roosevelt Institute	New York	Antitrust, monopsony, public investment
Washington Center for Equitable Growth	Washington DC	Academic grants, inequality-growth research
Stone Center (CUNY)	New York	LIS U.S. satellite, wealth measurement
ICRICT	Global panel	International corporate tax reform
Resolution Foundation	London	U.K. living standards, intergenerational wealth
ifo Institute	Munich	German wealth taxation, codetermination evidence
Levy Economics Institute (Bard)	New York	Heterodox macro, distributional national accounts
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities	Washington DC	U.S. federal tax policy
Open Markets Institute	Washington DC	Antitrust, monopoly power (independent since Sep 2017)

Profiles of the top-tier institutes

World Inequality Lab (WIL) / World Inequality Database (WID). Based at the Paris School of Economics with a sister presence at UC Berkeley, WIL is the most influential single research institute on global wealth and income concentration. It maintains the WID dataset (the source for nearly every international comparison cited in this wiki), publishes the periodic World Inequality Reports (2022 edition coordinated by Chancel, Piketty, Saez, and Zucman; 2026 conference scheduled), and trains the next generation of inequality researchers through its affiliated network of ~200 researchers globally.

WIL was co-founded by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Its annual budget is ~€1.5M, funded primarily by public research institutions (European Research Council, French national funders), public organizations, and non-profit foundations (Ford, Hewlett, Open Society). The funding mix is unusually transparent and unusually weighted toward public sources, which insulates WIL from the donor-influence risks that affect many U.S.-based research institutes.

International Tax Observatory (formerly EU Tax Observatory). Founded June 2021 at the Paris School of Economics under Zucman’s direction and rebranded as the International Tax Observatory in February 2026, this institute is the operational successor to WIL’s tax-policy work and the engine behind the Global Tax Evasion Reports (2024 edition). It produced the analytical foundation for both the Pillar Two corporate minimum tax and the Zucman billionaire minimum tax proposal endorsed at the 2024 G20 finance ministers’ meeting. The rebranding to ITO reflects an expanded mandate beyond EU-centric questions, with active partnerships with tax authorities in Brazil, Colombia, and Senegal.

The observatory is funded primarily by the European Union’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (initial grant: ~€1.1M; current funding under TAXUD/2020/DE/326). The institutional positioning — funded by EU governments to study tax evasion that affects EU revenue — has produced unusual policy traction but also historically constrained the agenda toward EU-relevant questions, a limitation the ITO rebranding aims to address.

Tax Justice Network (TJN). London-based, founded March 2003. TJN bridges research and advocacy more directly than WIL or the International Tax Observatory. Its flagship outputs are the Financial Secrecy Index and the Corporate Tax Haven Index (inaugural edition 2019; biennial), which rank jurisdictions on opacity and corporate-tax-haven characteristics respectively. TJN played a central role in the 2010s campaigns for FATCA, CRS, beneficial-ownership transparency, and country-by-country reporting; many of the substantive Pillar Two and UN Tax Convention positions are TJN-derived. Funding is a mix of foundation grants (Ford, Open Society, Joffe Charitable Trust, others) and government contracts.

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Washington DC, founded 1963 by Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet. IPS is the longest-running progressive U.S. think tank focused on inequality. Its Inequality.org project is the most-read U.S. clearinghouse on inequality statistics, and its annual Billionaire Bonanza report (first edition December 2015) is the U.S. analog to Oxfam’s Davos reports. IPS publishes broadly across the inequality agenda but concentrates substantively on U.S. wealth and tax policy. Funding mix: foundation grants (Ford, Hewlett, Atkinson, others), individual donors, and modest earned revenue.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Washington DC, founded 1986 by economists Jeff Faux, Lester Thurow, Ray Marshall, Barry Bluestone, Robert Reich, and Robert Kuttner. EPI is the dominant U.S. research institute on labor markets and wages. Its State of Working America series (published 12 times since 1988) is the most-cited U.S. wage and employment data product; its Family Budget Calculator is widely used in living-wage discussions. Substantively, EPI is the U.S. infrastructure for the labor-power and minimum-wage agendas. Funding mix: foundation grants (Ford, Hewlett, Joyce, others), labor unions (~25% of revenue historically), individual donors. The labor union funding is publicly disclosed but is sometimes used by critics to question independence.

Funding sources and independence considerations

Research-institute independence is a real concern in inequality work because the field’s findings have direct political implications and because most institutes depend on external funding. The honest assessment varies by institute type:

Funding type	Independence implications	Examples
Public research grants	Strong independence; subject to grant-cycle pressures	WIL, International Tax Observatory, university-based
Government contracts	Constrains agenda toward funder priorities; substantively independent within those	International Tax Observatory, OECD CTPA secretariat
Foundation grants (multi-source)	Strong if diverse; weaker if dependent on single major funder	TJN, IPS, EPI, Roosevelt
Foundation grants (single source)	Risk of agenda-setting alignment with funder	Several smaller institutes
Industry / labor union funding	Direct conflict of interest; should be publicly disclosed	EPI (labor); some industry-funded institutes
Individual large donors	Donor-influence risk; depends on board governance	Most U.S. think tanks
Earned revenue (publication, training)	Cleanest source; rarely large enough to fund institute	Few institutes

The general pattern is that funding diversity matters more than funding source. An institute funded by 30 sources, none over 5% of revenue, has more practical independence than an institute funded by 3 sources, even if all 3 are reputationally clean.

The U.S.-vs-European pattern is also worth noting. European research institutes are more heavily funded by public sources (EU, national governments, European Research Council) and less heavily dependent on private foundations than U.S. institutes. This produces somewhat different independence profiles and somewhat different topic coverage — European research is more directly engaged with EU-level policy processes; U.S. research is more dependent on foundation agenda-setting.

Outputs by type

Research institutes produce different types of outputs that operate on different policy time-scales:

Output type	Time-to-impact	Examples
Long-form data products	5–20 years	WID dataset; LIS database; Forbes billionaires
Peer-reviewed academic papers	2–10 years	Saez & Zucman QJE; Farber et al. QJE
Annual flagship reports	1 year	World Inequality Report; State of Working America; Global Tax Evasion Report
Policy briefs	1–6 months	Most institutes’ briefing series
Quick-response analyses	days–weeks	Tax-bill analyses; merger analyses; election analyses

Each output type plays a distinct role in the policy ecosystem. Long-form data products provide the empirical foundation that all other outputs build on. Academic papers establish methodological credibility and provide citable evidence for policy positions. Annual flagship reports translate technical research into policy-relevant narratives at moments of public attention. Policy briefs operate on the legislative/regulatory cycle. Quick-response analyses operate on the news cycle.

The most successful institutes operate across multiple output types rather than specializing in one. WIL produces the underlying data, the academic papers, and the World Inequality Reports; the International Tax Observatory handles tax-focused policy briefs and rapid-response analysis — covering nearly the full output stack. TJN combines research outputs with active advocacy. IPS combines research with the Inequality.org clearinghouse and direct campaign engagement.

Pipeline to advocacy and international institutions

The research-institute outputs do not affect policy directly; they affect policy through downstream advocacy organizations and international institutions. Three main pipeline patterns:

Direct technical-assistance pipeline. WIL and International Tax Observatory work directly with OECD CTPA, EU DG TAXUD, IMF Fiscal Affairs Department, and UN tax negotiations. Their research outputs become the technical foundation for institutional positions. The Pillar Two design and the billionaire-minimum-tax proposal both followed this pipeline.
Research-to-advocacy pipeline. Institutes provide the empirical and design foundation that advocacy organizations use in their campaigns. EPI research underlies AFL-CIO and CWA campaign positions; TJN research underlies Tax Justice campaigns globally; IPS research underlies Patriotic Millionaires and Americans for Tax Fairness.
Direct media-and-narrative pipeline. Inequality.org, the World Inequality Report launches, and the Global Tax Evasion Report launches generate substantial media coverage that affects elite and public framing of inequality issues. This is the slower but more durable pathway.

The institutes that operate across multiple pipelines simultaneously have the largest cumulative effect.

Crosswalk: institute → intervention

Intervention	Primary research institutes
Progressive taxation	WIL, International Tax Observatory, ITEP, Tax Foundation
Antitrust	Roosevelt, Open Markets Institute, Stigler Center
Labor power	EPI, ifo Institute, LSE Centre for Economic Performance
Financial regulation	International Tax Observatory, TJN, Better Markets
Democratic reforms	Brennan Center, Demos, Issue One, Open Secrets
Predistribution	Roosevelt, Hamilton Project, NCEO, ESOP Association
Global tax coordination	International Tax Observatory, TJN, ICRICT, ATAF

The crosswalk reveals that the highest-leverage research institutes are concentrated in just a few areas. WIL covers measurement broadly. International Tax Observatory dominates tax research. EPI dominates labor research. The other interventions have multiple specialized institutes but no single dominant one. This concentration pattern roughly tracks the prioritization in Prioritized Interventions — the highest-priority interventions have the most-developed research infrastructure.