The ifo Institute is one of the leading economic research institutes in Europe and at the same time the one most often quoted in the German media. Ifo conducts international high-quality research and intensively promotes junior researchers in economics. Ifo is member of the Leibniz Association and it co-operates closely with the University of Munich (LMU) within the CESifo Group. The ifo Institute is a European think tank that forms a bridge between academic research and public discourse. It focuses on applied economic research with clear policy implications with a view to achieving greater stability, prosperity and cohesion for Europe and the world. As one of the centers of the ifo Institute, the ifo Center for the Economics of Education focuses on the investigation of determinants and consequences of education.
Important work and services:
The ifo Center for the Economics of Education works particularly in the following areas:
- The center investigates current issues in the area of economics of education and makes the research results available to the community of researchers as well as to policy-makers and the general public.
- The center’s research results contribute to policy advice and the economic-policy debate in Germany and Europe.
- Based on international surveys conducted by the OECD like PISA and PIAAC, the center promotes the scientific investigation of student achievement and adult competencies in Germany and other countries.
- By evaluating policies with (quasi-) experimental methods, the center aims to bring evidence-based policy advice into the political decision-making process.
- The center provides the ifo Prussian Economic History Database (iPEHD), a database for micro-regional empirical research in economic history in particular in the areas of education and innovation.
- 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. The EBDC provides innovative datasets on German companies, featuring both survey data collected by the ifo Institute and external balance sheet data.
- The center is concerned with efficiency and equity in education. It examines the quasi-experimental evidence of school reforms in the federal states (EffEE).
- The ifo Education Survey is an annual opinion survey of more than 4,000 respondents. The Education Survey was developed by the ifo Center for the Economics of Education as part of the SAW project “The Political Economy of Education Policy: Insights from an Opinion Survey”, which is funded by the Leibniz Association.
