Swiss City-State Political and Economic Data 1666-1794

This dataset supports a study on the impact of lottery-based election systems in Swiss city-states from 1666 to 1794. It was used in a difference-in-differences analysis to examine effects on political seat distribution, 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 how changes in election systems influenced infrastructure expenditure patterns.
• Examine the correlation between lottery-based elections and the election of merchants to top political positions.

Strengths

• Data covers a long historical period of 128 years (1666-1794).
• Supports a published analysis using a difference-in-differences research design.
• Focuses on a specific and unique historical policy intervention (lottery-based elections).

Limitations

• The specific data structure, including column names, row count, and file formats, is unknown.
• Geographic scope is limited to Swiss city-states, which may limit generalizability.
• Historical data from this period may have gaps or inconsistencies in original records.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Data was gathered to support a historical economic study on election systems.

Time Range

1666 to 1794

Freshness

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

Geography

Swiss city-states