Swiss City-State Lottery Elections and Urban Development 1666-1794

This dataset supports a study on the impact of lottery-based election systems on political power distribution and urban development in Swiss city-states from 1666 to 1794. The analysis uses a difference-in-differences design to examine effects on trade tax revenues, trade volumes, and infrastructure expenditures. The author is Jonas M. Geweke.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between lottery-based election systems and the distribution of political seats within parliaments.
• Model the effect of election reforms on trade tax revenues and trade volumes over the 128-year period.
• Investigate the correlation between lottery-based elections and infrastructure expenditure patterns.
• Study the election of merchants to top political positions as a potential mechanism for observed economic outcomes.

Strengths

• Data covers a long historical period of 128 years (1666-1794).
• Study design employs a difference-in-differences methodology for causal inference.
• Focus on a specific and unique political reform (lottery-based elections) in Swiss city-states.

Limitations

• Specific data structure (rows, columns, sample data) is unavailable for assessment.
• Geographic scope is limited to Swiss city-states, limiting generalizability.
• Historical archival data may have gaps or inconsistencies in record-keeping.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Archival data compilation for academic research.

Time Range

1666 to 1794

Freshness

Dataset metadata was last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

Swiss city-states