History
The Institute was founded in December 1974 in Wichita, Kansas and initially funded by Charles G. Koch. It changed its name to the Cato Institute in July 1976. Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard was a core member of Cato's founding group and coined the institute's name. Rothbard served on its board until leaving in 1981 after disagreements with Ed Crane.
The Institute is named after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon expounding the political views of philosopher John Locke, that had a strong influence on the American Revolution's intellectual environment. The essays were named after Cato the Younger, the defender of republican institutions in Rome.
Cato relocated first to San Francisco, California in 1977, then to Washington, D.C. in 1981, settling initially in a historic house on Capitol Hill. The Institute moved to its current location on Massachusetts Avenue in 1993. Cato Institute was named the fifth-ranked think tank in the world for 2009 in a study of think tanks by James G. McGann, PhD of the University of Pennsylvania, based on a criterion of excellence in "producing rigorous and relevant research, publications and programs in one or more substantive areas of research".
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