Gernot J. Müller

Contagion of Optimism and Pessimism

Various factors affect business cycles. Zeno Enders and Gernot Müller, during their stay at the Ifo Institute, plan to investigate how optimism and pessimism can shape business cycles. Specifically, they intend to analyse how optimism and/or pessimism about the economic situation spreads through the economy, employing Ifo survey data to measure individual firms’ sentiment, by which they hope to be able to measure the contagion of optimism and pessimism in the cross section and over time.

Gernot J. Müller is Professor of Economics at the University of Tübingen. He is Research Professor in the Ifo Center for Business Cycle Analysis and Surveys, Fellow of the CESifo Research Network, Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Member, DFG Priority Program 1578 – Financial Market Imper-fections and Macroeconomic Performance. He was formerly Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn and Assistant Professor at the University of Frankfurt. His PhD in Economics is from the European University Institute, Florence, his Diplom Volkswirt from the University of Bonn and his MSc in Economics and Philosophy from the Lon-don School of Economics.