Disseminating Public Data as Public Use Files: What Makes a Successful Initiative?

The current policy emphasis on data-driven decision-making is creating the right incentives for government agencies around the world that have not traditionally disseminated their administrative data to do so. The literature on statistical disclosure control focuses on the technical aspects of a variety of methods designed to protect data confidentiality. There is, however, a void in the literature in regard to what other elements are necessary to create and sustain a successful initiative. This paper examines six case studies of individual-level datasets. It reviews current practice in several domains and summarizes recommendations from expert practitioners including challenges for future initiatives.     

Is there a Common Path that could have Conditioned the Degree of Welfare State Development in Latin America and the Caribbean?

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine from a multidimensional perspective the possible existence of a single path that could have conditioned the degree of welfare state development (WSD) in Latin America. Economic/industrial development, trade‐openness, democracy and the strength of leftist parties‐labour movement are used as explanatory variables in the qualitative comparative analysis. In contrast to previous findings, this paper shows that there is no evidence of a common path followed by countries with a relatively high/medium WSD. Nevertheless, countries that experienced a low economic/industrial development combined with a low democratic experience were conditioned to have low WSD.