Vergleich Österreichischer Aktienindizes (Comparison of Austrian Stock Market Indexes)

The Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) was long the monopolistic producer of an Austrian stock market index, but in 1981 decided to discontinue its calculation. The founder of the Institute and later Nobel laureate August F. Hayek introduced the index in 1927 when he was guided by the view that cyclical fluctuations were predominantly a monetary phenomenon and stock prices a leading indicator. During the 1960s and 1970s, several banks and the Vienna Stock Exchange started to produce their own indexes which made the WIFO index obsolete. In this paper, the various indexes are compared and linked to each other as of December 1980