One of the core indicators in the field of scientometrics is the number of papers published by a unit within a given period. However, such indicators can only be assessed properly by considering the unit’s available resources. When evaluating the efficiency of institutions worldwide, the...

Expectations are highly relevant for macroeconomic dynamics. Yet, the empirical evidence about properties of corporate macroeconomic expectations is scarce. Using new survey data on quantitative growth expectations of firms in Germany, we show that expectations are highly dispersed. The degree...

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 introduce archetypal analysis as a tool to describe and categorize scientists. This approach identifies typical characteristics of extreme ('archetypal') values in a multivariate data set. These positive or negative contextual attributes can be allocated to each scientists under...

An ongoing debate in the literature on efficiency of higher education institutions concerns the indicator for research output in the empirical analysis. While several studies chose to use the number of publications, others rely on the overall amount of research grants. The present study...

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...

Using new survey data on quantitative growth expectations of firms in Germany, we show that firms resort to local information when forming expectations about aggregate growth. Firms extrapolate from the economic situation in their county, industry growth and their individual business situation....

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...

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...

We construct a meta-ranking of 315 economics journals based on 38 different individual rankings. Our ranking incorporates both bibliometric measures from three different databases (Web of Knowledge, RePEc and Google Scholar) and previous rankings in the literature. Furthermore, we account for...