For the first time, the ifo Institute is organizing its very own hackathon – the ifoHack 2023.
The ifo Institute combines sharp economic reasoning and expert knowledge in empirical methods; using current advances in computational methods and open-source tools to leverage both yields enormous potential to address policy-oriented economic and social questions. For example, participants will build a predictive business climate model based on microdata provided by the ifo Institute and present its operating value via a web interface.
Our partners KfW Bank (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau) and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center) will also bring exciting challenges such as using Natural Language Processing for extracting sentiment from financial newspaper articles, predicting user behavior, or using spatial data for predicting real estate prices and will offer exclusive insights into their research activities.
- ifo "KT" Main challenge
In the ifo Business Survey every month approximately 9,000 German firms are surveyed on their current situation (status quo), recent developments (ex-post), and their plans and expectations for the near future (ex-ante).
Build a model which predicts the categorical answers of firms on various questions in the upcoming month. This model can be based on past answers and/or firm-specific information in the micro data of the survey (e.g., firm-size, region, sector). Which external sources can be used to predict firm-specific answers?
- KfW challenge
tbd
- DLR challenge
This spatial ifoHack challenge aims to investigate the relationship between land prices and spatial factors that characterize living environments, in large and diverse cities in Germany, like Berlin, Bremen, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main and Köln. By exploring information extracted from satellite images and other relevant spatial datasets, we aim to guide participants into exploring non-conventional data sources, to answer relevant economic questions related to housing markets and spatial inequalities. Are land prices positively associated with a greater availability of spatial determinants of well-being, such as green and open spaces, or walkable and bicycle paths? Is proximity to amenities, educational, leisure or work opportunities a factor that drives higher land prices? Is there a spatial segregation effect in terms of land prices and specific population subgroups? These are only some of the questions we aim to explore together at the ifoHack. By getting to know the right spatial data and methods, formulating new ideas that fit your specific research interests will be only one short step away.
- ifoGPT
Use a text corpus of past ifo press releases (use the one provided by us or collect your own) to develop a large language (e.g. transformer) model such as GPT or BERT and provide an intuitive ML-frontend to automatically generate a press release based on keywords such as "positive", "manufacturing sector" and "macroeconomy".
| Date | Start | End | Program | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday, 28 April 2023 | 15:00 16:00 16:15 16:30 17:00 18:00 19:00 |
16:00 16:15 16:30 17:00 18:00 20:00 |
Registration and Check-In Opening Ceremony Keynote Challenge Pitches Workshops and Matching Session Hacking starts Evening Snacks (Pizza) |
LES LES LES LES Workshop rooms Hacking spaces Lobby/Hacking spaces |
| Saturday, 29 April 2023 | 07:00 09:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 15:00 18:30 |
08:30 10:00 11:30 12:00 13:00 15:45 19:00 |
Breakfast buffet Morning Yoga Session Tech-Talk (KfW): Transformational Lending powered by AI@KfW Tech-Talk (DLR): tba Lunch buffet Guided Walking Tour "Historical Bogenhausen" Evening snacks |
Lobby/Hacking spaces Yard LES LES Lobby/Hacking spaces Bogenhausen Lobby/Hacking spaces |
| Sunday, 30 April 2023 | 07:00 12:00 12:00 13:00 15:00 15:15 15:30 |
08:30 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:15 15:30 17:00 |
Breakfast buffet Project Submission Deadline Lunch buffet Live Demo Session Winner Announcement Closing Ceremony Cool Down & Farewell Beers |
Lobby/Hacking spaces Devpost Lobby/Hacking spaces LES LES LES Lobby/Hacking spaces |