Abstract
The Economics and Business Data Center (EBDC), founded as a cooperation of the University of Munich (LMU) and the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in 2008, has the aim of opening new fields of economic research by providing innovative datasets of German companies. These datasets contain part of the survey data of the Ifo Institute as well as external balance-sheet and financial statement data. More precisely, in a first step, micro data from the Ifo Business Survey and from the Ifo Investment Survey has been linked with balance-sheet data from the enterprise databases Amadeus and Hoppenstedt. As a result, we can offer two extensive datasets of German companies that allow for the simultaneous research of rather qualitative aspects contained in the Ifo micro data together with quantitative accounting or structural company information: the EBDC Business Expectations Panel (focus: cyclical economic factors/balance-sheet data) and the EBDC Business Investment Panel (focus: investment/balance-sheet data). Both company panels contain historical as well as current data and are updated regularly. In general, because of the high levels of confidentiality and data security the Ifo Institute ensures its panel members, the EBDC company panels can only be used for research purposes on the premises of the Ifo Institute. Furthermore, the data is only provided in an anonymized way and with a one-year time lag. Its use is subject to strict security precautions. The aim of this paper is to give an overview on the data sources, and to describe the scope of and access to the EBDC data. Furthermore, it describes some research projects taking advantage of these datasets up till now.
Submitted Version (
Free)
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call