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Henry Goecke / Michael Grömling / Jan Marten Wendt IW-Trends No. 3 9. September 2020 Road Haulage Data in Business Cycle Analysis: An Application for the Bavarian

Economy Gross domestic product (GDP) figures for Germany’s 16 federal states are currently only published twice a year, with no quarterly figures available. This makes it impossible to pinpoint the exact timing of turning points in the economies of individual states.

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An Application for the Bavarian
Henry Goecke / Michael Grömling / Jan Marten Wendt IW-Trends No. 3 9. September 2020

Road Haulage Data in Business Cycle Analysis: An Application for the Bavarian

IW-Trends

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

Economy Gross domestic product (GDP) figures for Germany’s 16 federal states are currently only published twice a year, with no quarterly figures available. This makes it impossible to pinpoint the exact timing of turning points in the economies of individual states.

However, industrial production provides a practical alternative. To reduce the delay in identifying macroeconomic turning points at state level, the authors examine more promptly available road haulage data, taking Bavaria as an example. Data from the Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen and the Zentralstelle Verkehrsmanagement in Bavaria are used to compare truck traffic during the financial market crisis in 2008 and 2009 and during the current corona crisis. For the entire period under review, data on the volume of road transport provides a meaningful indicator with which to identify turning points in manufacturing, and thus in overall production, in the Bavarian economy. However, they show the decline in overall economic output only in very rough terms. Road haulage data provided early signs of an increasing decline in real GDP in Bavaria in the first quarter of 2020, in April and in May. In contrast to the financial crisis of 2008/2009, in the current corona crisis road transport data is responding more strongly than industrial production, which may be explained by the broader sectoral impact of the pandemic.

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An Application for the Bavarian
Henry Goecke / Michael Grömling / Jan Marten Wendt IW-Trends No. 3 9. September 2020

Henry Goecke / Michael Grömling / Jan Marten Wendt: Lkw-Verkehrsdaten in der Konjunkturanalyse – eine Anwendung für die bayerische Wirtschaft

IW-Trends

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

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Effects of Public Investment on Companies in Germany – Results of the IW Business Survey
Hubertus Bardt / Michael Grömling IW-Trends No. 2 16. June 2023

Effects of Public Investment on Companies in Germany – Results of the IW Business Survey

Weak public investment activity in Germany has contributed to the low productivity growth of the last decades. Even maintaining the contribution to growth of state-owned capital stock at the already low level of the 1990s would have required an additional ...

IW

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Hubertus Bardt / Michael Grömling in Advances in Resilient and Sustainable Transport External Publication 30. March 2023

Supply Chains, Cost and Investments in Times of Multiple Crises

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has significantly clouded the economic outlook in Germany and worsened the investment climate. The investment gap created in the wake of the Covid pandemic will not be closed for the time being.

IW

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