Seasonal Adjustment in the Ifo Business Survey – Conversion to the X-13ARIMA-SEATS Procedure

The seasonal adjustment is a fundamental component of the calculation of the results series of the Ifo Business Survey. The method used in this calculation will be converted as of January 2015 from the ASA-II procedure used to date to the X-13ARIMA-SEATS procedure widely used internationally. This article describes the basic concept, the partly changed characteristics of time series thanks to the conversion, and the advantages of the new process.