The Tobin Project: About the Tobin Project

Mission Statement

The Tobin Project is an alliance of the nation’s leading academics united by a belief in the power of ideas and a shared commitment to using ideas to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

Modeled after earlier efforts to link academics and lawmakers, such as John F. Kennedy’s Academic Advisory Group, the Tobin Project seeks to influence public debate by reaching both outward to connect with the policy community and inward to shape debate within the academic community.
Named for Nobel Laureate James Tobin and inspired by his legacy of public service, the Tobin Project seeks to:

Direct academic resources—“human capital”—toward the nation’s most pressing problems and strategically chart new directions in academic research and study;
Critically examine some of the most rigid paradigms constraining our thinking about the role of government, begin to suggest compelling alternatives, and encourage fellow scholars to follow suit;
Assert a standard of rigorous, evidence-based research in the arena of public policy debate, understanding that well-documented and persuasively argued academic consensus can carry significant weight with the nation’s lawmakers and the general public.

“I put high value...in the Tobin Project’s working groups.
Nothing sharpens your ideas more than having to explain them
to someone else.”

Professor Kenneth Arrow, 1972 Nobel Laureate and economics professor emeritus at Stanford University