In its early stages, the institute was financed by the latter's contacts at the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna, the Austrian National Bank and the Railway Federation. Later, it received support from the Rockefeller Foundation and became one of a string of funded business cycle institutes across Europe, which formed a Standing Committee of Business Cycle Institutes with Charles Rist as its president.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 396