Clemens Fuest is new head of Ifo Institute
Clemens Fuest succeeds Hans-Werner Sinn at the helm of the Ifo Institute in Munich.
Hans-Werner Sinn was the public face of the Munich-based Ifo Institute. An economist, he has shaped the national economic debate in Germany for decades – not only in essays for specialist journals but also in chat shows and books that advanced to become bestsellers. He liked to put forward a clear thesis in easily understandable sentences and comprehensible arguments. On 1 April 2016 he will be succeeded by 47-year-old Clemens Fuest – who is just as argumentative but milder in tone.
Stellar career
After a degree in economics at Bochum and Mannheim, Fuest obtained his PhD in Cologne and already qualified as a professor at the University of Munich in his early thirties. He spent seven years teaching public finance in Cologne before moving to Oxford in Great Britain in 2008 in order to conduct research into corporate taxation. He returned to Germany in 2013 as the president of the Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim. Fuest is currently working on a book that presents a future vision of the EU and aims to appeal also to a non-expert readership. It is thus quite possible that the Ifo Institute will once again find itself with a high-profile president in the form of Clemens Fuest.
