Beyond the Business Climate: Supplementary Questions in the ifo Business Survey

1 Introduction

Since 1949, the ifo Institute has been conducting the monthly ifo Business Survey by asking German companies about various relevant variables regarding their economic activity (Anderson 1952; Langelütke and Marquardt 1951).^[1] The obtained data proved to be very valuable for empirical economic research and business cycle analysis on the country level as well as at the economic sector and regional level. The advantages of the microdata sets that are most worthy pointing out are the high number of about 9000 monthly responses from a set of firms that are representative for the German economy, the extensive set of questions answered by every firm, and the large number of observations by firm (on average, firms are observed more than 70 times) as response rates are uncommonly high and attrition is low compared to other business surveys (Link 2020). Moreover, the questionnaires of the monthly ifo Business Survey are mostly answered by people in management positions within the participating companies. This means the requirements for reliable reporting are fulfilled (Sauer and Wohlrabe 2019).

As a main result of the ifo Business Survey, the ifo Business Climate Index Germany is one of the most important leading economic indicators in Germany (Abberger and Wohlrabe 2006; Lehmann 2020). In addition, numerous other indicators are calculated and published from the data material of the ifo Business Survey. Among them, for instance, are the overall indicators on employment plans (ifo Employment Barometer), export expectations, or uncertainty in the German economy. An overview of all questions and indicators are shown in Demmelhuber et al. (2022). In addition to the aggregated results, the disaggregated microdata are an enormous data treasure for diverse types of analyses (Becker and Wohlrabe 2008).

The inclusion of supplementary questions has further increased the survey’s potential for economic research. Some of these supplementary questions are surveyed irregularly or only once. Their focus usually is on current economic topics or firm-specific information of interest for research projects.

The scope of this article is to emphasize the enormous possibilities for all kinds of research projects. We give a tabular overview of all supplementary questions from 2009 until May 2022. Moreover, we present selected results. Subsequently, we outline the data access for researchers. We conclude by providing a brief outlook on possible further developments.

2 Supplementary Questions in the ifo Business Survey

In the past few years, supplementary questions became more and more part of the ifo Business Survey. These questions are mainly prompted by the intention to obtain an ad hoc picture of the effects of certain developments in economic policy or in the world economy on the companies, and the firms’ reactions to them (e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine). The other reason is the collection of firm-specific data for various research projects. Since the ifo survey is a panel survey, these questions can also be linked to other survey variables. Additionally, they can serve either as control, group, explanatory, or dependent variables in statistical or econometric analyses. Supplementary questions not only provide information at the current survey period, but also offer the possibility for ex-post evaluations.

We provide in Tables 1 –5 an overview of the various topics and contents covered by the supplementary questions that have been surveyed in the ifo Business Surveys from 2009 until May 2022. Furthermore, the tables show the survey date for each question, the sector in which it was asked, and references to selected results. The exact wording of all supplementary questions as well as more results and applications are given in Demmelhuber et al. (2022).

We divided the supplementary questions into different thematic blocks. Most commonly, “current economic policy questions” (Table 1) are used for the evaluation of consequences of political decisions or other important (geopolitical) events for the German economy. “Company- or respondent-specific questions” (Table 2) can be used for research projects, where it may be important to have specific information about the responding company or personally about the respondent. This information can also be matched with other variables of the Business Survey or used as control variables. Therefore, some supplementary questions were asked to create control variables or group variables (e.g. family businesses vs. other businesses). “Other research questions” cover a wide topical range. Table 3 gives an overview of these questions surveyed since 2009. Starting March 2020, the Covid-19 crisis overshadowed the German and the World economy. For this reason, numerous supplementary questions have been included in the survey every month dealing with the current economic impact of the pandemic and the reactions of the companies. These questions mainly focus on short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on companies and cover topics such as short-term work, remote working from home, governmental pandemic assistance programs, or internal company problem areas during the crisis (Table 4). As of the date of this article, also various supplementary questions focus on the economic effects of the war in Ukraine (Table 5).

3 Data Access

Researchers can access data from the ifo Business Survey on the microdata level at the LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC) under strict nondisclosure agreements free of charge for noncommercial and scientific usage (Seiler 2012). This provision of data is intended to increase synergies between empirical and theoretical research. The EBDC provides external databases in combination with innovative data sets on German firms. These company panels include both survey data of the ifo Institute as well as external accounting data or other structural enterprise information concerning corporate finance, investment activity, or corporate governance (e.g. from the company databases Amadeus, Orbis, and Hoppenstedt).

The microdata panel from the ifo Business Survey includes both historical and current data starting from 1980. The EBDC anonymizes the data and continuously expands the data sets both in terms of time and content. The website of the EBDC (https://www.ifo.de/en/EBDC) provides a comprehensive overview and description of the data sets that are hosted at the ifo Institute. Access to the EBDC Business Panels (including a detailed documentation of all variables) can be requested via the online research application.

4 Summary and Outlook

Supplementary questions in the ifo Business Survey offer a large potential for all kinds of economic research and analyses. For instance, they can be very useful for analyzing current developments in the German economy and can also serve as input for various research projects. For the future, ifo intends to use supplementary questions for the introduction of new survey methods. Randomized questions are an example for such a new field. Therefore, it is possible to randomly divide the panel in different groups and ask the participants slightly different questions or give them different texts or information as introduction before the questions. Analyses of the influence of the wording or of the order of the answer categories can be valuable results for the future design of new standard or supplementary questions.

Beyond the ifo Business Survey, ifo has a lot more survey activities. There are among others, the quarterly ifo Personnel Manager Survey that surveys companies from all sectors on HR questions and staff deployment, and the ifo Management-Survey that surveys a selected group of decision-makers in German on current economic policy issues and changes in the macroeconomic environment. Sauer and Wohlrabe (2020) present a detailed description of all ifo surveys. These surveys also have the possibility for supplementary questions and offer a big potential for research projects and economic analyses. The microdata from these surveys can be accessed by researchers at the EBDC.