Welcome!

 

The "Liberalization Database - 37 countries, 1973-2013" is a systematic compilation of liberalizing and de-liberalizing reforms in the context of the Liberalization project directed by Klaus Armingeon (University of Zurich and Trento) and Lucio Baccaro (University of Geneva and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne), and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The database covers 37 advanced capitalist democracies between 1973 and 2013 and identifies a total of 12,426 reform policy changes (i.e., policy discontinuities) in the following 13 policy fields: active labor market policies (almp), competitive and product market regulation (comp), corporate governance (gov), education (edu), employment protection legislation (epl), financial reform (fin), health care (hc), industrial relations (ir), non-employment benefits (neb), pension systems (pen), privatization (pri), tax policies (tax), and vocational education training (voctr). The unit of analysis are policy reforms which we retrieved from various sources such as OECD publications. For some countries external country experts checked our data base.

The large reach of the dataset makes it difficult to maintain a uniform degree of data quality across countries. This is mainly the result of a lack of homogeneity across sources, which vary considerably in terms of breadth and reliability across both countries and policy fields. Moreover, it was not always possible to find suitable external experts who could help rectify issues related to data quality. Therefore, we also provide an assessment of data quality and completeness for each country in the codebook.

Citation (please refer to the respective data set as follows)

Armingeon, Klaus, Lucio Baccaro, Anna Fill, Jorge Galindo, Stefan Heeb, and Rafael Labanino. 2019. Liberalization Database 1973-2013, Zurich, Trento, Geneva and Cologne.

 

Coverage

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom & USA: 1973-2013

Bulgaria: 1991-2013

Croatia: 1992-2013

Cyprus: 1980-2013

Czech Republik, Hungary, Slovak Republic: 1988-2013

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia: 1989-2013

Iceland, Portugal: 1974-2013

Israel: 1999-2013

Romania: 1990-2013

Spain: 1976-2013