In this paper, we study the predictive power of electricity consumption data for regional economic activity. Using unique weekly and monthly electricity consumption data for the second-largest German state, the Free State of Bavaria, we conduct a pseudo out-of-sample forecasting experiment for...

This paper examines the anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area based on data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The analysis shows that the overall distribution of medium- and long-term inflation forecasts has changed considerably following the global financial...

Climate change policies have been rising to the top of the global political agenda, but how should governments finance them? Public economists propose solutions based on economic theory, but their political feasibility depends on voters' support, and ordinary households often neglect economic...

Dealing with the consequences of climate change will put an increasing burden on public and private finances. We use the example of floods in a survey experiment among 8,000 German households to elicit households' preferences for climate adaptation policies. In Germany, as in many countries, we...

We study the link between expected inflation and wages using novel panel data from German firms and employees. We find that pass-through - the percentage point change in wage growth given a one percentage point change in expected inflation - is small: 0.11-0.17 for firms and 0.03-0.07 for...

In this study, we evaluate whether survey-based indicators produce lower forecast errors for export growth than indicators obtained from hard data such as price and cost competitiveness measures. Our pseudo out-of-sample analyses and forecastencompassing tests reveal that survey-based indicators...

In this study, we systematically evaluate the potential of a bunch of survey-based indicators from different economic branches to forecasting export growth across a multitude of European countries. Our pseudo out-of-sample analyses reveal that the best-performing indicators beat a well-specified...

The ifo Institute is Germany’s largest business survey provider, with the ifo Business Climate Germany as one of the most important leading indicators for gross domestic product. However, the ifo Business Survey is not solely limited to the Business Climate and also delivers a multitude of...

Accurate real-time macroeconomic data are essential for policy-making and economic nowcasting. In this paper, I introduce a real-time database for German regional economic accounts (READ-GER). The database contains real-time information for nine macroeconomic aggregates and the 16 German states....