Datasets: decentralization and popular democracy: governance from below in Bolivia

These are the two databases on which all the quantitative work in the book 'Decentralization and popular democracy: governance from below in Bolivia' (econometrics, graphs, charts, etc) is based. They contain essentially the same data, but formatted in version 1 for cross-sectional regressions, and in version 2 for panel regressions. Both databases follow similar naming conventions, provided in the data key. The data are organized by municipality and cover the period 1987-2007. Financial variables are based on yearly observations, whereas most other variables (e.g. demographic, geographic, institutional) are based on data from the 1992 and 2001 censuses, and the unusual 1997 “Municipal Census” of local infrastructure, service provision, and administrative processes. Please note that the key grew out of my and my assistants’ use of this data, and hence others are likely to find it somewhat cryptic. The data require a bit more than the usual investment in familiarization, and are thus unsuitable for users looking to dip in quickly.