Economic activity 2005: forecasting and reality

For many years the Ifo Institute has critically examined the quality of its own business cycle forecasting and discussesdthe reasons for the differences between forecasting and reality. In 2005 the Ifo Institute correctly forecasted the basic business trend in Germany. As expected, in the course of the business cycle an accelerated growth of total output occurred, and also the slow-down when looking at the year as a whole was correctly forecasted in the basic trend.