Ludwig Erhard, Adolf Weber and the Difficult Birth of the ifo Institute

The ifo Institute was not conceived on the drawing board and then newly founded. It was created in January 1949 via the merger of the Süddeutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung with the Informations- und Forschungsstelle für Wirtschaftsbeobachtung set up by the Bavarian Statistical Office in April 1948 and seamlessly continued with the work of both of its predecessors. Ludwig Erhard was a central figure in the history of the ifo Institute’s conception, which goes back to 1942 when Erhard set up the Institut für Industrieforschung in Nuremburg, an institute that subsequently looked at questions related to rebuilding Germany after the end of the Second World War. In these difficult years Erhard and the great German economist Adolf Weber laid the foundations for applied, policy-oriented economic research in Munich. The ifo Institute was able to successfully build on these foundations as of 1949. The Bavarian State government played a major role in the merger, and especially the Ministry of Economics, which started pulling strings behind the scenes at an early stage.