A large literature studies subjective beliefs about economic facts using unincentivized survey questions. We devise randomized experiments in a representative online survey to investigate whether incentivizing belief accuracy affects stated beliefs about average earnings by professional degree...

What matters for individuals' preferences for redistribution? In this paper we show that consequentialist beliefs about inequality - beliefs about how economic inequality changes the crime rate or the quality of democratic institutions, for example - have a large causal impact on individuals'...

Qualitative interviews are one of the fundamental tools of empirical social science research and give individuals the opportunity to explain how they understand and interpret the world, allowing researchers to capture detailed and nuanced insights into complex phenomena. However, qualitative...

Using data from two representative and large-scale population surveys with more than 4000 participants, we investigate the effect of randomized priming interventions on attitudes towards immigrants. We document robust null effects of these interventions under two experimental settings, across...

Researchers and policy makers face significant challenges in selecting a method to conduct remote surveys, especially when collecting sensitive information or during turbulent life stages of hard-to-reach groups. In the context of the COVID-19 lockdown, we randomly selected about 600 adults in...

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...

In the monthly ifo Business Survey around 9,000 German companies answer questions about their current business situation, expectations and plans for the near future as well as on other business variables. This paper provides an overview of all regular questions (monthly, quarterly, bi-annually,...

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...

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...

We measure individual-level loss aversion using three incentivized, representative surveys of the U.S. population (combined N = 3,000). We find that around 50% of the U.S. population is loss tolerant, with many participants accepting negative-expected-value gambles. This is counter to earlier...