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In the monthly ifo Business Survey, around 9000 companies answer questions about their current business situation, expectations, and plans for the near future as well as on other business variables. Beyond the regular questions, ifo has also the possibility to include supplementary questions into the survey. These questions may be prompted by the intention to obtain an ad hoc picture of the effects of certain developments in economic policy on the companies and their reactions to them (e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine). Another reason is the collection of data for research projects. This article gives an overview of all supplementary questions since 2009 through May 2022. It intends to show examples of the use of the obtained data and can be used as a guide for future research projects. Researchers can work with the firm-level microdata of supplementary and regular survey questions at the LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center.

The ifo Institute for Economic Research has been conducting the ifo business survey since its foundation in 1949. To ensure stability of participation rates, regular sample recruitment is indispensable. Does the dispatch method matter for response rates of a recruiting campaign? To answer this question, we conducted a controlled experiment involving invitation letters sent out to over 8,000 German industrial firms in May 2019. Our results show that standard mailing significantly increases the response rate compared to 'Dialogpost' (bulk mail). From a cost perspective, costs for standard mailing outweigh this effect.

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