IGM Forum

The Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) is a research center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the United States. The initiative supports original research on international business, financial markets, and public policy. The IGM is most famous for the weekly polls it conducts of its Economics Experts Panel, a panel of 51 leading economists in United States universities. The IGM also organizes and sponsors conferences.

The Initiative on Global Markets was launched with a founding grant (4 years, $1.5 million) from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Trust (CME Trust), announced December 14, 2006. IGM began its activities in 2007: it co-sponsored (along with the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance at Brandeis University) the 2007 U.S. monetary policy conference in Washington, D.C. on March 9, 2007.

The IGM maintains an Economics Experts Panel (called the IGM Panel for short) comprising leading economists at top United States universities. It circulates poll questions to the IGM Panel and publishes the responses of the IGM Panel members on its website, the IGM Forum.

All IGM poll questions are phrased in the form of a statement, to which participants can choose options from a Likert scale: Strongly Agree, Agree, Uncertain, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Participants must also indicate a confidence level in their response (on a scale of 10). They may additionally providing a free-form comment to explain their selection.

The poll is conducted over email, with one question sent every week to the IGM Panel members. Candidate poll questions can be submitted by the general public through the website. The final decision on what question to include is made by IGM faculty. Responses of all poll participants (excluding No Opinion responses), along with confidence level and comment, are available on the IGM Forum poll results page, allowing analysts to better understand the reasoning behind the poll responses. In addition, an unweighted and confidence-weighted summary of responses is available.

As of July 2016, the IGM Panel has 51 economists. The IGM Forum website includes a biography and vote history for each panelist.

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