The Economic Expert Survey (EES): A Quarterly Global Survey of Economic Experts

The Economic Experts Survey (EES) of the ifo Institute and the Swiss Economic Institute (IWP) surveys around 8,000 economic experts from 135 countries. The purpose of the EES is portraying the views of economic experts on economic policies and the political situation in their home country. It also covers views on current economic outcomes such as inflation. The first survey took place in February 2022. The EES is run quarterly. It succeeded the World Economic Survey (WES) that was installed at the ifo Institute in 1981. The WES asked around 1,500 experts from 100 countries primarily on business cycle expectations. The EES includes the 1,500 WES-experts and was extended by another 6,500 experts. We recruited these 6,500 experts via the research network repec. Our sample exceeds any international expert panel by an order of magnitude. Our survey includes participants from countries that cover around 99 percent of world GDP, 95 percent of world population, and 92 percent of global land area.

The EES complements the Economists‘ Panel of the ifo Institute and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in an excellent manner. The Economists’ Panel surveys tenured economics professors at German universities (Section 5.6).

The major purpose of the EES is to provide service to the general public. The results are published on the webpage of the ifo Institute. Press releases inform journalists about the results. We are prepared to respond to recent economic policy debates such as the drastic increase in inflation in the year 2022 and describe experts’ views on the individual issues.