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Predecessor | Spin-off of Project RAND, a former partnership between Douglas Aircraft Company and the United States Air Force until incorporation as a not-for-profit/nonprofit, and gaining independence from both. |
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Formation | May 14, 1948 |
Founders | |
Type | Global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm [1] |
95-1958142 | |
Legal status | Nonprofit corporation |
Purpose | |
Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
Coordinates | 34°00′35″N118°29′26″W / 34.009599°N 118.490670°W |
Region | Worldwide |
President and CEO | Jason Gaverick Matheny [2] |
RAND Leadership |
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President, RAND Europe | Hans Pung [2] |
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Subsidiaries | RAND Europe Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School |
Affiliations | Independent |
Revenue | $390 million (2023) [4] |
Disbursements | Numerous |
Expenses | $427 million (2023) [5] |
Endowment | $288.7 million (2023) [6] |
Staff | 1,900 (2023) [7] |
Website | www |
The RAND Corporation is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, [1] research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND Corporation engages in research and development (R&D) in a number of fields and industries. Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the space race, the Vietnam War, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, and national health care.
The RAND Corporation originated as "Project RAND" (from the phrase "research and development") in the postwar period immediately after World War II. [8] [9] The United States Army Air Forces established Project RAND with the objective of investigating long-range planning of future weapons. [10] Douglas Aircraft Company was granted a contract to research intercontinental warfare. [10] Project RAND later evolved into the RAND Corporation, and expanded its research into civilian fields such as education and international affairs. [11] It was the first think tank to be regularly referred to as a "think tank". [1]
RAND receives both public and private funding. Its funding sources include the U.S. government, private endowments, [12] corporations, [13] universities, [13] charitable foundations, U.S. state and local governments, international organizations, and to a small extent, foreign governments. [13] [14]
RAND has approximately 1,850 employees. Its American locations include: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Arlington, Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts. [15] The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute has an office in New Orleans, Louisiana. RAND Europe is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom; Brussels, Belgium; and Rotterdam, Netherlands. [16] RAND Australia is located in Canberra, Australia. [17]
RAND is home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, one of eight original graduate programs in public policy and the first to offer a PhD. The program aims to provide practical experience for students, who work with RAND analysts on addressing real-world problems. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility. The Pardee RAND School is the world's largest PhD-granting program in policy analysis. [18]
Unlike many other programs, all Pardee RAND Graduate School students receive fellowships to cover their education costs. This allows them to dedicate their time to engage in research projects and provides them with on-the-job training. [18] RAND also offers a number of internship and fellowship programs allowing students and others to assist in conducting research for RAND projects. Most of these are short-term independent projects mentored by a RAND staff member. [19]
RAND publishes the RAND Journal of Economics , a peer-reviewed journal of economics. [20]
Thirty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize, primarily in the fields of economics and physics, have been associated with RAND at some point in their career. [21] [22]
RAND was created after individuals in the War Department, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and industry began to discuss the need for a private organization to connect operational research with research and development decisions. [19] The immediate impetus for the creation of RAND was a conversation in September 1945 between General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Douglas executive Franklin R. Collbohm. [23] Both men were deeply worried that ongoing demobilization meant the federal government was about to lose direct control of the vast amount of American scientific brainpower assembled to fight World War II. [23]
As soon as Arnold realized Collbohm had been thinking along similar lines, he said, "I know just what you're going to tell me. It's the most important thing we can do." [24] With Arnold's blessing, Collbohm quickly pulled in additional people from Douglas to help, and together with Donald Douglas, they convened with Arnold two days later at Hamilton Army Airfield to sketch out a general outline for Collbohm's proposed project. [24]
Douglas engineer Arthur Emmons Raymond came up with the name Project RAND, from "research and development". [8] Collbohm suggested that he himself should serve as the project's first director, which he thought would be a temporary position while he searched for a permanent replacement for himself. [8] He later became RAND's first president and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1967. [25]
On 1 October 1945, Project RAND was set up under special contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company and began operations in December 1945. [19] [26] In May 1946, the Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship was released.
By late 1947, Douglas Aircraft executives had expressed their concerns that their close relationship with RAND might create conflict of interest problems on future hardware contracts. In February 1948, the chief of staff of the newly created United States Air Force approved the evolution of Project RAND into a not-for-profit/nonprofit corporation, independent of Douglas. [19]
On 14 May 1948, RAND was incorporated as a not-for-profit/nonprofit corporation under the laws of the State of California and on 1 November 1948, the Project RAND contract was formally transferred from the Douglas Aircraft Company to the RAND Corporation. [19] Initial capital for the spin-off was provided by the Ford Foundation.
Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the space race, the Vietnam War, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, the digital revolution, and national health care. [27] In the 1970s the Rand Corporation adjusted computer models it was using to recommend closures of fire stations in New York City so that fire stations were closed in the most fire-prone areas, home to Black and Puerto Rican residents, rather than in wealthier, more affluent neighborhoods. [28]
RAND contributed to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory. [29] Chief strategist Herman Kahn also posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War . This led to Kahn's being one of the models for the titular character of the film Dr. Strangelove , in which RAND is spoofed as the "BLAND Corporation". [30] [31]
Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, long before Sputnik, the RAND project was secretly recommending to the US government a major effort to design a human-made satellite that would take photographs from space and the rockets to put such a satellite in orbit. [32]
RAND was not the first think tank, but during the 1960s, it was the first to be regularly referred to as a "think tank". [1] Accordingly, RAND served as the "prototype" for the modern definition of that term. [1]
In the early 1990s, RAND established a European branch to serve clients across the public, private, and third sectors, including governments, charities, and corporations. RAND Europe is the European arm of the RAND Corporation, and like its main branch, it is a not-for-profit/nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to improving decision-making through evidence-based research and analysis. RAND Europe's stated mission is to improve policy and decision-making through rigorous, independent research. RAND Europe is incorporated in, and has offices in, Cambridge, Rotterdam, and Brussels. [33] [34]
The research of RAND stems from its development of systems analysis. Important contributions are claimed in space systems and the United States' space program, [35] in computing and in artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many of the principles that were used to build the Internet. [36] RAND also contributed to the development and use of wargaming. [37] [38]
Current areas of expertise include: child policy, law, civil and criminal justice, education, health (public health and health care), international policy/foreign policy, labor markets, national security, defense policy, infrastructure, energy, environment, business and corporate governance, economic development, intelligence policy, long-range planning, crisis management and emergency management-disaster preparation, population studies, regional studies, comparative studies, science and technology, social policy, welfare, terrorism and counterterrorism, cultural policy, arts policy, and transportation. [39] [14] [11]
During the Cold War, RAND researchers contributed to the development of nuclear strategy concepts such as deterrence theory and mutually assured destruction. [40] In recent years, RAND has analyzed military readiness, force modernization, and counterterrorism strategies. For example, one study examined the effectiveness of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. [41]
RAND designed and conducted one of the largest and most important studies of health insurance between 1974 and 1982. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, funded by the then–U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established an insurance corporation to compare demand for health services with their cost to the patient. [42] [43]
In 2018, RAND began its Gun Policy in America initiative, [44] which resulted in comprehensive reviews of the evidence of the effects of gun policies in the United States. The second expanded review in 2020 [45] analyzed almost 13,000 relevant studies on guns and gun violence since 1995 and selected 123 as having sufficient methodological rigor for inclusion. These studies were used to evaluate scientific support for eighteen classes of gun policy. The review found supportive evidence that child-access prevention laws reduce firearm self-injuries (including suicides), firearm homicides or assault injuries, and unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among youth. Conversely, it identified that stand-your-ground laws increase firearm homicides and shall-issue concealed carry laws increase total and firearm homicides. RAND also emphasized that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. [46] Both proponents and opponents of various gun control measures have cited the RAND initiative. [47] [48] [49] [50]
Additionally, RAND has researched the opioid epidemic, and alcoholism. [51]
The RAND analysis of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching, a $575 million initiative from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to increase teacher effectiveness, found that the interventions had no effect on student achievement. [52]
RAND has examined the implications of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity threats, and autonomous systems. It was accused of working too closely with Open Philanthropy in its work on AI, at the risk of losing its independence. [53] [54] [55] RAND employees have expressed concerns to Politico about the organization's objectivity after it was revealed that RAND helped draft the Executive Order on AI, following over $15 million in funding from a Facebook founder-backed Open Philanthropy. [56] In December 2023, the House Science Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology raising concerns over RAND's "research that has failed to go through robust review processes, such as academic peer review." [57] [58] On September 13, 2024, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation sent a letter to the RAND Corporation to better understand it's "involvement in the AI Executive Order and the administration’s other actions related to online speech." [59]
Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model. In 1997 Merton together with Myron Scholes were awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for the method to determine the value of derivatives.
Herman Kahn was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve survivability during the Cold War. Kahn posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he was one of the historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove. In his commentary for Fail Safe, director Sidney Lumet remarked that the Professor Groeteschele character is also based on Herman Kahn. Kahn's theories contributed to the development of the nuclear strategy of the United States.
Albert James Wohlstetter was an American political scientist noted for his influence on U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an accomplished historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985.
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university and member of the Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and institutes.
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and former columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman was the sole winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to new trade theory and new economic geography. The Prize Committee cited Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.
The Sunshine Policy is one of the approaches for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea, lasting from 1998–2008 and again from 2017–2020.
Hudson Institute is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation.
The University of Basel is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universities. The university is traditionally counted among the leading institutions of higher learning in the country.
Harry Max Markowitz was an American economist who received the 1989 John von Neumann Theory Prize and the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Thomas Crombie Schelling was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He was also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute.
Trickle-down economics is a pejorative term for government economic policies deemed to disproportionately favor the upper tier of the economic spectrum under the belief that this will eventually benefit the economy as a whole. The principle is founded on the idea that spending by this group "trickles down" to those less fortunate in the form of stronger economic growth. The term has been used broadly by critics of supply-side economics to refer to taxing and spending policies by governments that, intentionally or not, result in widening income inequality; it has also been used in critical references to neoliberalism.
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, though this is disputed. The movement is often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School is a private graduate school associated with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. The school offers doctoral studies in policy analysis and practical experience working on RAND research projects to solve current public policy problems. Its campus is co-located with the RAND Corporation and most of the faculty is drawn from the 950 researchers at RAND.
Global Peace Index (GPI) is a report produced by the Australia-based NGO Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) which measures the relative position of nations' and regions' peacefulness. The GPI ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their levels of peacefulness. In the past decade, the GPI has presented trends of increased global violence and less peacefulness.
Esther Duflo, FBA is a French-American economist currently serving as the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2019, she was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics award funded by Sveriges Riksbank and administered by the Nobel Foundation.
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Since March 1901, it has been awarded annually to people who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary History describes it as "the most prestigious prize in the world."
The 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided equally between the American economists Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig "for research on banks and financial crises" on 10 October 2022. The award was established in 1968 by an endowment "in perpetuity" from Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Committee announced the reason behind their recognition, stating:
"This year's laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, have significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital."
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