Big Data Economics
New insights through innovative datasets? Answers to economic questions in real time? With the help of new data sources and methods and thanks to collaboration with companies and public administration, research questions can be addressed faster, more precisely, and in greater depth.
Large, complex, and innovative datasets from a wide variety of sources open up numerous possibilities for applied economic research and serve as an innovative basis for evidence-based policy advice. Corresponding data originates, for example, from collaboration with companies and public administration and from other research fields. With the help of such new data sources and state-of-the-art statistical methods, key economic questions can be addressed faster, more precisely, and in greater depth. The ifo Institute focuses its activities in Big Data Economics on five core areas: company data, big data from public administration, image and text files, web scraping, and new methods. In doing so, the ifo Institute attaches great importance to data protection and to protecting the interests of its partners, as well as to transparency and its scientific independence.
“Big data and business data offer huge opportunities to answer economic research questions in new and better ways. With their help, economic development can be examined closer to the current point in time, making it easier to determine the differences between various groups of households, companies, or regions.”
Our Activities in Big Data Economics
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The ifo Institute collaborates with numerous companies in order to use data for economic research and policy advice. In doing so, we cover a wide range of topics: from the use of mobile phone data to analyze working from home and to evaluate anti-congestion charges for city centers, to the use of bank data to monitor economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and to analyze housing market policy in cooperation with a real estate portal, to digitalization and the future of work using data from a professional network.
Effects of a Congestion Charge on Retail Trade and Tourism in Munich
Traffic Effects of a Congestion Charge in Munich
Economic Effects of the “Berliner Mietendeckel”
Digitale Kompetenzen – Ist die deutsche Industrie bereit für die Zukunft?
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We use tax, registry, and social security data to analyze economic policy and economic issues. Here, the spectrum ranges from the analysis of behavioral effects in the tax and transfer system to the use of machine learning to detect tax evasion, the analysis of public transport strikes, and the identification of success factors in the integration of underage refugees.
Under- and Overemployment in Germany: The role of the tax and transfer system and reform options
Age at Arrival and Residential Integration
Zwischen Wunsch und Wirklichkeit: Unter- und Überbeschäftigung am deutschen Arbeitsmarkt
Für wen lohnt sich Arbeit? Partizipationsbelastungen im Steuer-, Abgaben- und Transfersystem
The Effects of Early Retirement Incentives on Retirement Decisions
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Image and text files represent another innovative data source for economic analyses. For example, together with the German Aerospace Center, we are using satellite data to investigate the drivers of socioeconomic inequality and the effect of EU funding policies on regional development. We also use natural language processing to extract economic insights from unstructured text data such as curricula or politicians’ tweets. Our spectrum ranges from the analysis of historical dialects to explain contemporary social interactions to text analyses with patent data.
Selective Sharing of News Items and the Political Position of News Outlets
Evaluation of EU Regional Policy using Satellite Datav
The Effects of Migration, Competition, and Patents on Innovation
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Websites are a rich source of data for research and policy advice projects. For example, we currently use web-scraped price data from supermarkets to measure the price effects of VAT reforms, and we analyze online collaboration using data from GitHub. Similarly, various studies on real estate prices and taxation are based on advert data from web portals and newspapers.
The Pass-Through of Temporary VAT Rate Cuts: Evidence from German Supermarket Retail
Who Bears the Burden of Real Estate Transfer Taxes? Evidence from the German Housing Market
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Es ergeben sich vielfältige weitere Möglichkeiten zur Nutzung innovativer Methoden in der volkswirtschaftlichen Forschung. Beispielsweise wird Machine Learning genutzt, um einen Indikator für Demokratie zu entwickeln. Weitere Studien analysieren Bildungschancen und Chancengleichheit auf Basis von Gendaten oder nutzen Stromverbrauchsdaten in der Konjunkturprognose.
Wirtschafts-/Konjunkturanalyse mit Stromverbrauchsdaten
Using Machine Learning for Measuring Democracy: An Update
Beyond Equal Rights: Equality of Opportunity in Political Participation
Core Aspects of our Collaboration with our Partners
Data Protection
The ifo Institute takes data protection and the protection of the interests of its partners, in particular the protection of personal data, very seriously. We use anonymized data in our statistical evaluations, which at no time reveals individual information about specific persons, transactions, or companies.
Thanks to our accredited EBDC research data center, we have extensive expertise in the processing of sensitive data and access to secure, monitored data workstations.
All statistical evaluations are carried out in strict compliance with well-documented, coordinated, regularly updated, and monitored technical and organizational measures and in accordance with all legal requirements, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as contractual agreements.
Good Scientific Practice
Scientific integrity and independence are key to the way we work. We work in accordance with the German Research Foundation’s Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice, and we conduct our research in a scientifically independent, open-ended, and transparent manner.
Are you interested in talking about opportunities for us to collaborate with your company or institution? Please feel free to contact us!