wiiw ranked third best international economic policy think tank in the world
31 January 2020
wiiw improved its rank from 4th last year in the Global Go To Think Tank Report 2019 of the University of Pennsylvania.
This category lists ‘top think tanks that provide superior innovative research and strategic analyses’ with the aim of ‘advancing debate, facilitating cooperation between relevant actors, maintaining public support and funding, and improving the overall quality of life in one of the relevant countries’. wiiw was ranked behind only Bruegel (Belgium) and Brookings Institution (United States). In 2012, wiiw was included in this global ranking of think tanks for the first time. Since then, the institute has continuously improved its position, from rank 17 (2012) to 14 (2013), 12 (2014), 5 (2015) and 4 (2016, 2017, 2018).
wiiw is an economics think tank based in Vienna. It focuses on Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) as well as four main thematic areas: macroeconomic analysis and policy; labour, migration and income distribution; international trade, competitiveness and FDI; and regional development. In the last year, wiiw’s contributions to economic policy debates in Europe have included:
- Our proposal for a European Silk Road and its financing (used in a Financial Times editorial and presented to stakeholders in Brussels);
- How to meet the challenges of demographic decline in the EU and CESEE;
- How countries can break free of the middle income trap by focusing on more knowledge-intensive production activities;
- EU enlargement in the Western Balkans;
- How to ensure economic convergence rather than divergence in Europe;
- Macroeconomic spill-overs from EU cohesion policy;
- Priorities for the future of EU industrial policy;
- Dissecting the global productivity slowdown;
- Refugee integration in Austria (including focused studies on different types of integration, mental health and employment rates).
wiiw has also for several decades been one of the most prominent and successful providers of macroeconomic forecasts for CESEE. We also took the opportunity in 2019 to look back at how Eastern Europe has changed in the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The ranking is carried out annually by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania. It involved 1,796 peer institutions and experts from academia, journalism, politics and the civil society in a variety of categories. Among the evaluation criteria are not only the quality of research and the reputation of the scientific staff, but also the professionality of communication and the impact on political decision-making. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the institute ranked first in the last years, was recognised as a Center of Excellence in an own category.