The Data and Information Services Center (DISC) has added yet another research study to its online archive this year:
Belgian Municipal Accounts for 16 Governments, 1870-1933 is a study that contains information and data about the receipts and expenditures of 16 municipal governments in Belgium during the period 1870-1933. All of the information on receipts and expenditures was taken from various volumes of the ‘Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique’. While this source provides information about both the budget (intended receipts and expenditures) and accounts (actual receipts and expenditures) of municipal governments, only the latter is included in the data file.** Information about political parties, city council seats, and college seats is also provided.
This study was initially deposited at the Data and Program Library Service (which later became DISC) in 1979 by its principal investigator, Michael T. Aiken. Since then, the data files and documentation have been available by request only.
As of November 2018, users are now able to access this study documentation (e.g. codebook, data files) online; a free registration is required in order to download data files. The codebook is available in PDF format. The dataset is available in raw ASCII, Stata, and SPSS file formats, with the corresponding command files and data dictionaries.
**Please note that data is missing for all cities from 1914 to 1918.