Another week, another trip

This time it's off to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I will be giving a talk at the dedication of the University's Cline Center for Democracy.  The Cline Center has a major research project called the Societal Infrastructures and Development (SID) project. It is a very ambitious undertaking devoted to nothing less than answering the question: "How can we enhance the quality of life for people throughout the world?"

Two data-gathering exercises being carried out under the project's umbrella seem particularly interesting:

the Comparative Constitutions Project and the Event Analysis.  The constitutions project involves the systematic collection, translation, digitization and coding of every constitution in the world since 1789.  It provides a wide array of comparative data on the formal institutional designs adopted by nations at different points in time.  It also provides valuable data on national contexts.

The event analysis involves the collection, digitization, classification and analysis of an imposing array of newspaper reports of relevant events for every nation in the SID research design since January 1, 1946.  Currently an archive of over 30,000,000 news reports has been assembled, with thousand of reports being added daily. 

The project's conceptual framework looks, well, comprehensive.  I look forward to learning more about it during my visit.  

Comments

[wjd123]

Dani,

This is off the topic.

I went searching for one of your comments to other peoples comments and I couldn't find any. Are they removed when your original comment is archived?

I wanted to look again at the comment you made about one of the fundamental underlying principles of economics being that individuals knowing best their own desires. You mentioned it in two different posts.

What was that underlying fundamental principle again? On first reading I thought it was an innocuous tautology, but I'd like to think about it.

[Thomas Kang]

Dani,

It's good to hear that there are such ambitious project in UIUC. It seems to be related to my future thesis (I hope). The idea is to take data about education and health, for example, and evaluate the standard of living (capabilities) in Brazil between 1872 and 1960. The idea is also to relate the provision of this public goods with the institutions (laws, constitutions) and the distribution of political power. It is something like Engerman & Sokoloff or Acemloglu et al.

I hope this project go ahead. Maybe I will use this database someday.

Thanks

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