Clemens Fuest New Ifo President

Clemens Fuest is one of the clutch of bright post-doctoral students of Hans-Werner Sinn. He seems to leave good memories wherever he sojourns in his career. After studying economics at the universities of Bochum and Mannheim, he came to the LMU University of Munich to complete what Germans call Habilitation and other places venia legendi, the post-doctoral degree that qualifies a scholar to become a professor. After bagging that qualification in 2000, he was immediately offered a professorship of political economy by his old alma mater, the University of Cologne, where he had obtained his doctorate in 1994.

In 2008 he was snatched by Oxford University, where he was not just a professor of business taxation, but also the Research Director of that university's Centre for Business Taxation. He stayed there until 2013, when Mannheim, the alma mater of his early university days, claimed him to become President and Director of Science and Research of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), a post that also involves a professorship of economics at the University of Mannheim.

And now he's back in Munich, the haunt of his habilitation days. Wherever he has been, they want him back. He has just accepted the presidency of the Ifo Institute, which comes complete with a professorship at the LMU University of Munich.

Born in 1968 in Münster (the town where Hans-Werner Sinn went to university), he didn't take long to make his mark in the profession. He is a member of Germany's National Academy of Science and Engineering and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, sits on the board of the International Institute for Public Finance (IIPF), and has been a CESifo Fellow for many years. He is also a member of the Verein für Socialpolitik (Germany’s Economic Association) and of the American Economic Association.

One of Germany's most internationally published scholars, he is also an experienced policy advisor and a highly respected voice in the economic policy debate. He has been a member of the Academic Advisory Board to the German Federal Ministry of Finance since 2003, and headed its board from 2007 to 2010. In 2012 he became a member of the Advisory Board for Sustainable Development of the Baden-Württemberg State Government. He also contributed to the conception of a simpler tax law for Germany.

As Hans-Werner Sinn put it, "his public finance expertise and his cosmopolitan view will be great assets in his new role Ifo president." We can only concur.