The IFO Business Climate is the most important indicator for the business cycle in Germany. In 1993 the connection between the two components of the business climate – business situation and business expectations – was graphically portrayed by Ifo in a 4-quadrant scheme: the IFO Business...

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...

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...

Business cycle indicators are used to assess the economic situation of countries or regions. They are closely watched by the public, but are not easy to interpret. Does a current movement of the indicator signal a turning point or not? With the help of Markov Switching Models movements of...

This paper applies component-wise boosting to the topic of regional economic forecasting. Component-wise boosting is a pre-selection algorithm of indicators for forecasting. By using unique quarterly real gross domestic product data for two German states (the Free State of Saxony and...

Der ifo Geschäftsklimaindex für die gewerbliche Wirtschaft Deutschlands ist erneut gesunken. Die Unternehmen bewerten zwar ihre aktuelle Geschäftslage weiterhin mehrheitlich als gut, jedoch deutlich zurückhaltender als im Vormonat. Auch die Erwartungen an den zukünftigen Geschäftsverlauf...

Der ifo Geschäftsklimaindex für die gewerbliche Wirtschaft Deutschlands ist erneut gestiegen. Die Unternehmer sind zufriedener mit ihrer aktuellen Geschäftslage. Auch der – wenngleich etwas verhaltene – Optimismus mit Blick auf die weitere Geschäftsentwicklung hat zugenommen. Die...