ifo Konjunkturampel Revisited

Monthly changes in the Ifo Business Climate can be converted into probabilities for both the “expansion” and/or “contraction” phase of the economic cycle using a Markov switching model. These probabilities – presented in the ifo Konjunkturampel – offer key information for the early detection of economic turning points. The changeover of the seasonal adjustment process used in the Ifo Business Climate to the census X-13ARIMA-­SEATS procedure called for a recalculation of the ifo Konjunkturampel. This article presents the methods used and their results.