Comment by burkaman
It looks like CEPR is funded mostly by donations, but some think tanks also make money by performing specific studies for funders. Sometimes a government agency or corporation wants to study the potential effects of a policy change or something like that, but doesn't have the capacity or expertise to do it themselves, so they will contract a think tank to do the work. There will be a clear disclaimer if that is the case though.
> Are there unknown backers paying them
There should never be any unknown backers. If you ever see an article like this that doesn't have a big "Our Funders" link in the page footer or somewhere else, you should be suspicious.
> There should never be any unknown backers. If you ever see an article like this that doesn't have a big "Our Funders" link in the page footer or somewhere else, you should be suspicious.
Yeah but sometimes the big funders for "Americans For Prosperity" are "Americans Against Poverty" and "People For Prosperity" who are both in turn funded by "People Against Poverty" which is funded in part by "Americans For Prosperity" so figuring out where exactly the funding is ultimately coming from can be challenging.