Germany has experienced tremendous growth rates in the aftermath of World War II. Since the early 1970s, growth rates declined and settled down at a more or less constant rate of 2 percent per year, only to experience a renewed negative trend around the early 2000s. We investigate the evolution...

This paper investigates the effects of government spending on key macroeconomic variables in Germany. It contributes to the ongoing debate on how to properly identify exogenous fiscal shocks in the data and on whether or not the government should intervene in the business cycle. Following Ramey...

The ifo Business Climate Index is the most important early indicator for developments in the German economy. It aggregates thousands of responses from the companies surveyed in the ifo business surveys on a monthly basis. This article presents the new ifo Business Climate for Germany, which will...