The German minimum wage was introduced in January 2015. This paper investigates the short-term macroeconomic impacts of its introduction. Therefore, an estimated VAR/VECM is used to perform forecasts that are interpreted as counterfactual to the introduction of the minimum wage and compared to...

We propose the so-called domestic "embodied unit labor costs" (EULC) at the country-sector level as a new cost-related basis for measures of international competitiveness. EULC take into account that a sector's labor costs constitute only a small share of its total cost which to a large extent...

We propose the so-called domestic "embodied unit labor costs" (EULC) at the country-sector level as a new cost-related basis for measures of international competitiveness. EULC take into account that a sector's labor costs constitute only a small share of its total cost which to a large extent...

Im Rahmen der regelmäßigen Revisionen der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnungen (VGR) werden nicht nur die Daten am aktuellen Rand, sondern auch weit in die Vergangenheit zurückreichende Zeitreihen überarbeitet. Damit gehen regelmäßig Niveaueffekte, zum Beispiel ein höheres...

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective...

A method is proposed to measure capital services in production. This means that productive assets are weighted according to their user costs. The user costs of the individual asset classes are estimated based on data from the national accounts and other sources. The results show that, in the...

This article presents the IAB working time measurement concept, which determines the hours worked in Germany and their individual components. These statistics are essential for a proper analysis of aggregate labour market trends and cyclical fluctuations. We outline the conceptual and...

We present the operationalized Toll Index, which is a new type of early indicator for the German business cycle. We present the basic idea and document the power of the indicator for the purpose of nowcasting. The data will be regularly available at the IDSC, the data bank center of IZA and will...

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...

We consider the cyclical properties of the German economy prior and after reunification in 1990 from the perspective of a real business cycle model. The model provides the framework for the selection and consistent measurement of the variables whose time series properties characterize the cycle....