The President of the Institute for the World Economy leaves the research facility in Kiel.
(Photo: dpa)
Everything used to be easier – even among economists. When asked something of an economist, the answer was seldom surprising. The Keynesians on the one hand saw the answer in stronger state intervention, the Ordoliberals always fixated on the self-healing powers of the market. That’s history.
The modernization of economic research has ensured that economists have outgrown their institutional framework. This is shown not least by the complicated search for a successor at the Institute for the World Economy for ex-President Gabriel Felbermayr. It takes a plan from everyone involved as soon as possible to change that. In times of increasing political polemics, good economists and good political advice are needed in Germany more than ever.
The need for a new framework arises from the fact that German economists no longer allow themselves to be pigeonholed in ideological boxes. They are certainly still influenced by their school of thought, but do not necessarily see it as the only truth.
The director of the employer-financed Institute of the German Economy, Michael Hüther, made common cause with the SPD member Jens Südekum when they presented proposals for dealing with the debt brake. Ifo President Clemens Fuest sees rising inflation rates as a temporary phenomenon.
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And the “Council of Economic Experts” formulates common positions instead of a festival of minority votes. – A few decades ago these sentences would have sounded like a fairy tale.
Why all the stress?
And as open as the economists have become in their ways of thinking, this also applies to their way of working. Flexible cooperation with various institutions, direct exchange with one another, no long bureaucratic obstacles, that is what most people want.
But in Germany they are offered this less and less – which is not due to those responsible in the institutes, but to the general conditions given to them. See Felbermayr: Federation, states, Leibniz Association, University, everyone has something to say. And so more and more economists are asking themselves: Why all the stress? The emigration to the USA and Great Britain is increasing. That must be a warning sign.
More: The best researchers are drawn abroad