We compare Covid-related working papers in economics to non-Covid-related working papers in four dimensions. Based on five well-known working papers series and data from the RePEc website, we find that Covid papers are mainly cover topics in macroeconomics and health, they are written by larger...

Using new survey data on quantitative growth expectations of firms in Germany, we show that firms resort to local information when forming expectations about aggregate growth. Firms extrapolate from the economic situation in their county, industry growth and their individual business situation....

The monthly ifo Business Survey is the basis for numerous economic indicators, such as the ifo Business Climate Index Germany. Moreover, the anonymized micro data can be used for a wide range of research projects. In order to obtain robust results, the panel of survey participants must be large...

FamData is a database covering family businesses and non-family businesses across various size classes and branches containing structural and financial information. The ifo Institute assembled a business panel with executives from almost 4,000 companies. In addition to the "hard" business data...

The ifo Business Climate Index for Germany is considered as the most important leading indicator for the German economy. Media reports often refer to the mood in German boardrooms. Based on a survey conducted in May 2023, we show that most of the around 9,000 respondents to the monthly ifo...

This study identifies day-of-the-week effects in business surveys using monthly data from the ifo Institute. The odds are higher that companies are more likely to exhibit more pessimistic business expectations for the upcoming months on Mondays and more optimistic expectations at the end of the...

Differences in annual publication counts may reflect the dynamic of scientific progress. Declining annual numbers of publications may be interpreted as missing progress in field-specific knowledge. In this paper, we present empirical results on dynamics of progress in economic fields (defined by...

In this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard...

The use of large datasets for macroeconomic forecasting has received a great deal of interest recently. Boosting is one possible method of using high-dimensional data for this purpose. It is a stage-wise additive modelling procedure, which, in a linear specification, becomes a variable selection...

In this paper we present the Ifo Investment Database, which provides annual investment data for 12 investment assets in 50 German industries from 1991 onward. The data is consistent with national accounts statistics provided by the German Federal Statistical Office and is based on investments in...