Great Barrington plays host to the American Institute for Economic Research. AIER was founded in 1933 as a non-profit scientific and educational organization. Originally at MIT, it relocated to the southern shore of Great Barrington's Long Pond in 1946. In October 2020 the Institute held a meeting of epidemiologists, economists and journalists to discuss government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The result was the Great Barrington Declaration, signed at the Institute's headquarters on October 4, 2020, and released to the public the following day, which advocated an alternative, risk-based approach to the pandemic involving "focused protection" of those most at risk and seeking to avoid or minimize the societal harm of lockdowns.