In this article, the two chairpersons of the German Council for Social and Economic Data (RatSWD: Rat fuer Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten) give a summary of the council’s work in the years 2004 to 2006 and its future plans for improving the statistical infrastructure for economic and social research

This paper discusses how household panels in general - and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) in particular - an serve as reference data for researchers collecting datasets that do not represent the full universe of the population of interest (e.g., through clinical trials, intervention...