Institutional Changes and Their Impact on Branches

Institutional framework conditions play a crucial role in the functioning of markets. The institutional framework does not remain constant as a general rule, but changes over time. To analyse whether changes in institutional framework have an impact on economic developments, especially on those of branches, the corresponding innovations for a specific economic branch first need to be identified. The Ifo Center for Industrial Organisation and New Technologies aims to contribute to this analysis by setting up an “institutional database at a branch level”. The database aims to register the institutional changes affecting a branch in as systematic and standardised a manner as possible, so that available branch-related knowledge can be used in scientific work. The article presents the first descriptive assessments of the database’s contents.