Making the case for data archiving: The changing “value proposition” of social science data archives

preprint of paper for the 2018 Annual Conference for the Association for Information Science & Technology conferenceIn this paper, we analyse how three social science data archives (SSDA) have adapted to provide value to different stakeholders over time. Drawing on historical administrative documents and interviews with current and former staff at three long standing SSDA, we examine how these archives have provided value, to whom, and how they have situated themselves vis-à-vis alternative archives over 20-40 year time spans. Although data archives have been in operation for decades, how they have sustained themselves over time by continuing to provide value to stakeholders in changing conditions is less well understood. Studies of value have tended to focus on a snapshot in time rather than providing a view that emphasizes change over time. We conclude with a comparative analysis of changes in value across archives and suggestions for future workAlfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Party Control of State Government and the Distribution of Public Expenditures

This paper examines the effects of party control of state governments on the distribution of intergovernmental transfers across counties from 1957 to 1997. We find that the governing parties skew the distribution of funds in favor of areas that provide them with the strongest electoral support. This is borne out in two ways. (i) Counties that traditionally give the highest vote share to the governing party receive larger shares of state transfers to local governments. (ii) When control of the state government changes, the distribution of funds shifts in the direction of the new governing party. We find only weak evidence that parties reward electorally pivotal counties or counties in electorally pivotal legislative districts. Finally, we find that increased spending in a county increases voter turnout in subsequent elections. This suggests that parties have an electoral incentive to skew the distribution of funds to influence future election results, and the mechanism through which this works is "mobilization" rather than "conversion" of voters in a fixed electorate. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2006 .