Research data offered by the EBDC

Logo des LMU-ifo Economics Business Data Center

The Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC) is a combined platform for empirical research in business administration and economics of the Ludwig–Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and the ifo Institute. It aims to open up new fields for empirical research in business administration and economics.

Here you can find all research datasets offered by the EBDC including documentation as well as the data repository.

Content

The EBDC provides innovative datasets on German companies, featuring both survey data collected by the ifo Institute and external balance sheet data. The EBDC’s tasks also include the procurement and administration of data sources for research and teaching, the central provision, updating and documentation of external databases, as well as the acquisition of corresponding support tools.

As of 2014, users can  access the data of the Research Data Centers of the Federal Statistical Office and the statistical offices of the Länder on the premises of EBDC. This greatly expands the diversity and opportunities for empirical research in the Economics & Business Data Center. The Center offers external researchers the option of storing the datasets used in their research work in the EBDC and of making them available to the scientific community. In 2018 the EBDC became part of the LMU Open Science Center, which aims to foster open science practices and help researchers fulfill the standards of good scientific practices.

Beyond that, the EBDC serves as a contact and central coordinator for licensing economic firm-level datasets for the LMU’s Munich School of Management and LMU’s Department of Economics and supports (guest) researchers of the LMU and the ifo Institute on site. The EBDC actively participates in scientific debate by presenting its research results at conferences and organizing workshops on firm data research and other topics.

The Economics and Business Data Center was founded in 2008 and is supported by the Exzellenzinitiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (within the “LMUExcellent” programme). In spring 2011 it received accreditation as a research data center of the "Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten" (RatSWD).

In July 2016, the RatSWD established a complaints office offering users the option of addressing the RatSWD directly with any unresolved problems concerning the usage of data provided by the EBDC, should it have proven impossible to resolve those problems with the contact persons in the EBDC bilaterally. The corresponding contact form, as well as details on the procedure, can be found on the website of the RatSWD (see below; only available in German).

 

The German Data Forum (RatSWD)

Complaints Office

Open Science Center (OSC), LMU Munich

Forschungsdatenzentrum, Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder

Partner des EBDC
Partner des EBDC

Research Stay in the EBDC

The Economics & Business Data Center offers professors, doctoral students and other researchers the opportunity to temporally use the facilities of the EBDC for their research projects and provides external databases together with two innovative datasets on German firms. These company panels include both survey data of the ifo Institute (ifo panel data at the firm level) as well as external accounting data and other structural enterprise information concerning corporate finance, investment activity or corporate governance. Since its foundation in 1949, the ifo Institute has collected relevant data of the Federal Republic of Germany concerning cyclical trends, firms’ capital spending and innovation strategy.

Research projects of national and international researchers which do not have a commercial focus can apply for admission to the datacenter. The EBDC supports these researchers on site with the necessary infrastructure.

Due to the usage of confidential and sensitive information, admission to the EBDC company datasets can only be granted on site, taking the anonymization of the data according to our access concept into account. However, the continuously updated datasets and their specific combination with additional sources will offer high-quality data to our guests, making empirical research in new fields of business administration and economics on the firm-level possible.

For questions concerning our services, your stay at the EBDC, or other activities, our staff is glad to assist you (ebdc@ifo.de).

Publications

Hönig, Anja, "Linkage of Ifo Survey and Balance-Sheet Data: The EBDC Business Expectations Panel & the EBDC Business Investment Panel", Journal of Applied Social Science Studies 130 (4), 2010, 635–642.

Hönig, Anja, "The New EBDC Dataset: An Innovative Combination of Survey and Financial Statement Data", CESifo Forum 10 (4), 2009, 62–63.

Abberger, Klaus, Sascha O. Becker, Barbara Hofmann, Klaus Wohlrabe, "Mikrodaten im ifo Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung: Bestand, Verwendung, Zugang", Ifo Working Paper No. 44, 2007.

Becker, Sascha O. , Klaus Wohlrabe, "Micro Data at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research – The “Ifo Business Survey”, Usage and Access", Ifo Working Paper No. 47, 2007.

“Serious political advisory requires access to high-quality data. The Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC) of the ifo Institute and LMU makes a crucial contribution to this.”

Prof. Dr. Oliver Falck, Director of the ifo Center for Industrial Organisation and New Technologies

Data

EBDC Team

Heike Mittelmeier
EDV specialist
Main Focus
LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC)
Dr. Sebastian Wichert
Head of the LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC, Research Data Center)
Main Focus
Big Data Economics
Firm Data
Health Economics
Valentin Reich
Senior Big Data Engineer
Main Focus
LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC)
Dr. Marie-Louise Arlt
Junior Research Group Leader and Coordinator in Big Data, LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC)
Main Focus
LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC)
Energy
Mobility
Cristina Rujan
Corporate Collaborations and Data Science Education Coordinator
Main Focus
LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC)
Firm Collaborations
Firm Data
Contact
Heike Mittelmeier

Heike Mittelmeier

EDV specialist
Tel
+49(0)89/9224-1379
Fax
+49(0)89/985369
Mail
mittelmeier@ifo.de

Visitor Information

EBDC
c/o ifo Institute
Poschingerstr. 5
81679 Munich
Germany

Opening hours of the EBDC: Mo-Th 9:30 - 17:00, Fr 9:30 - 15:00

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