CES is an independent institute within the Faculty of Economics of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. It brings together economists from all over the world for discussion and exchange of knowledge and ideas and promotes contacts with their Munich colleagues.
CES invites visiting professors and scholars to do their research in Munich and to teach in the faculty's graduate programme. Since the institute was founded in 1991, more than 400 long term visitors came to Munich. The combined international expertise of the about 20 council members guidelines the center's visiting scholars programme.
Since its foundation, CES has substantially enlarged its own research group. Its research concentrates on Public Finance aspects of the economy, but includes many diverging fields of economics.
Every year around Thanksgiving, CES awards a "Distinguished CES Fellowship" to an internationally outstanding economist, who then gives the "Munich Lectures in Economics" in the great hall of the university. Prize winners include Avinash Dixit, Anthony Atkinson, Jean Tirole, Paul Krugman, and Rüdiger Dornbusch, Guido Tabellini, Peter Diamond, Oliver Hart, and Nicholas Stern. Their lectures are published in CES' own series with the MIT Press. CES is also a co-publisher of Economic Policy, Europes leading scientific journal in the field.
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CES was officially founded on January 18, 1991 and welcomed its first visitors - among them Gary Becker, David Bradford, Richard Musgrave, and David Wildasin - in April of the same year. Further developments in 1993 paved the way to today's status quo, providing CES with additional guest apartments and making attendance at CES lectures obligatory for doctoral students in economics. In 1994, CES became a co-publisher of Economic Policy, Europe's leading scientific journal in that field. 1994 also saw the birth of the Munich Lectures in Economics, which were given that year by the first Distinguished CES Fellow, Avinash Dixit. Since then these events have become an integral part of the academic life of the economics department and the list of the previous prize winners includes such renowned personalities as Jean Tirole, Paul Krugman, Rudi Dornbusch, Guido Tabellini, Peter Diamond, Oliver Hart, Nick Stern, Jim Poterba, Andre Shleifer, Bruno Frey and Alberto Alesina. Their lectures also appear in a book series published with MIT press.
In 1998, CES became one of the first institutions world-wide to offer the opportunity to join its community of economic discussion virtually via the internet. The Munich Lectures in Economics as well as other outstanding seminars, including those given by R. Boadway, R. Solow and J. Wilson, can be easily downloaded and watched as internet video lectures.
In the same year the Center also substantially enlarged its own in-house research group producing a sustainable and constant stream of first-class economics research, published in international refereed journals.
Yet this is not the end of the story. Since 1999 CES has been in close cooperation with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, an independent, non-profit organisation focussing on empirical policy studies. Both institutes now meet under an umbrella organisation, CESifo, to build bridges between theoretical and empirical economic investigation and between researchers from all over the world. This is the new starting point for the next decade of cutting-edge international economic research in Munich.
Click here for a more detailed account of the CES history or the Ten Years CES report.
