Access to Business Microdata Julia Lane
Motivation Business data important for variety of public policies, e.g. understanding ◦ Effect of taxes on job and wealth creation ◦ Offshoring and outsourcing ◦ Impact of globalization ◦ Creation of job ladders and career paths ◦ Wage determination….. ◦ But lack of access => much more known about supply than the demand side of labor market Limited access (Licensing, RDC’s) => underutilization, no community development, “artisan science” AND little input into survey creation, design and implementation Huge loss for research and policy community
Access is the future of science – and should be the future of US social science Change the way in which social science research is done: move from artisan research to collaboratory Reduce burden Expand knowledge infrastructure Increase replicability and generalizability of research Increase the value added of data and research => increased resources Expand researcher access to US data: lack of access in the United States is affecting the quality of American research – and the quality of research on American issues NSF supported research Economics generally (SOLE, NBER Summer Institute) Science and Innovation Policy research
Disclosure Risk Data Utility Original Data No Data Maximum Tolerable Risk Released Data R-U Confidentiality Map
Vision: An Ideal System Secure Flexible Low Cost Meet Replication standard ( Gary King, Harvard, 1995) The only way to understand and evaluate an empirical analysis fully is to know the exact process by which the data were generate Replication dataset include all information necessary to replicate empirical results Metadata crucial to meet the standard Composed of documentation and structured metadata Undocumented data are useless Create foundation for metadata documentation and extend data lifecycle
“Reasonable Means” doesn’t need to mean onsite access
Disclosure Risk Data Utility Original Data No Data Maximum Tolerable Risk Released Data R-U Confidentiality MapNew Data