The IGM maintains an Economics Experts Panel (called the IGM Panel for short) comprising leading economists at top United States universities.
Poll format 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. 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. The IGM Forum website includes a biography and vote history for each panelist. According to economist
Justin Wolfers, the US panel is geographically and ideologically diverse and are "a good sample of the leading economists in the nation".
Coverage The New York Times has cited the IGM polls on raising the minimum wage, the utility to consumers of allowing services such as
Uber and
Lyft to compete on equal footing with taxi firms,
Forbes has also cited the IGM poll on high-skilled immigration, noting the consensus in favor of immigration.
U.S. News & World Report has cited the IGM poll on tax cuts.
Reception The New York Times praised the IGM polls for providing "an easily digested summary of the insights of mainstream economics into continuing political controversies".
Nobel Memorial Prize laureate
Paul Krugman, writing for
The New York Times in January 2013, noted that the IGM polls did not focus on areas that are disputed by macroeconomists. IGM published a poll entitled "Modern Monetary Theory" in March 2019, in relation to
the heterodox macroeconomic theory (MMT) that had been in the news at the time.
Bill Mitchell, an MMT scholar, described the poll as "simply a dishonest representation of MMT", stating that he would also "strongly disagree" to both questions being posed, and he argued that the
University of Chicago Booth School of Business is probably falling prey to
groupthink. ==Notes==