ifo Institute

"The ifo Institute is one of Germany’s leading research institutes and one of its largest and most respected think tanks. Founded in 1949 and associated to the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, the ifo Institute has a long history of providing German and international policy makers with advice and high-quality, actionable solutions to the most pressing economic issues.

In Germany, the ifo Institute monitors economic activity and financial trends, examines government spending and taxation, conducts industry branch analysis and has recently pioneered pension and welfare to work reforms. The institute’s new focus is on Human Capital in a wold of technological change.

The ifo Institute has a range of well-known and respected publications, the most notable being the monthly Business Climate Index for Germany, the ifo Business Survey, the ifo World Economic Survey and the bi-annual ifo Economic Forecast. The ifo Institute is also one of the six institutions preparing the bi-annual Joint Economic Analysis and Forecast for the German government.

In 1999, the ifo Institute, Center for Economic Studies (CES) at Ludwig Maximilian University, and CESifo GmbH (Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research) together launched the CESifo Group, a research group unique in European economic research. It combines the theoretically oriented economic research of the university with the empirical work of a leading economic research institute and places this combination in an international environment. The CESifo Group consists of around 500 researchers from around the world, together publishing more than 250 working papers per year, and organizes around 20 conferences per year. CESifo is also the brand name under which all CES and ifo research is disseminated internationally."