If you are an empirical researcher, I have a challenge for you.

Blair Fix

In the
[last](https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2019/04/17/three-cheers-for-the-empirical-muckraker/)
post, I celebrated the noble pursuit of empirical muckraking. Now I have
a muckraking challenge for the empirical researchers of the world.

### The Deep History of Energy and Institution Size

Over the last 5 years, I have pieced together an interesting relation
between energy and institution size. As energy use per capita increases,
institutions get *larger*. The results are in this [blog
post](https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2019/04/13/groping-in-the-dark-the-untold-side-of-research/),
and in this
[paper](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171823)
(with some updates in this
[preprint](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/v9pur/)).

Here is my challenge to empirical muckrakers. Can we piece together the
deep history of this relation?

I've managed to find about a century of data in the United States. I
then used World Bank data to look at international trends. The problem
with the World Bank data is that it only goes back to 1960 (at best).

I want to piece together a deeper history of energy and institution
size. This will require the unglamorous work of finding data on a
country by country basis. We obviously need energy use data, but my
experience is that this is the easiest to get. It is harder to get
institution size data. In the past, I've used the following data:

- self-employment rates
- average firm size
- large-firm employment share
- government employment share

Do you have an idea for another indicator of institution size? If so,
let me know.

### Goals

If you find interesting data, there are three possibilities. First, you
can just publish it on your own. But please let me know what you find.
Second, you can send me your results and I'll post them on this blog ---
giving you due credit, of course. If we get enough data we can publish
something more formal. Ultimately I'd like to create a database on the
deep history of energy and institution size.

If you are interested in this challenge and want to discuss it, please
contact me!

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In the last post, I celebrated the noble pursuit of empirical muckraking. Now I have a muckraking challenge for the empirical researchers of the world. The Deep History of Energy and Institution Size   Over the last 5 years, I have pieced together an interesting relation between energy and institution size.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

A Muckraking Challenge