1. Open Access and Knowledge Production: ‘Leximetric’ Data Coding
Simon Deakin
OpenCon 2016 Cambridge
24 November 2016

2. The CBR Labour Regulation Index
117 countries, 44 years ( )
40 indicators
5 sub-indices: different forms of employment, working time, dismissal, employee representation, industrial action
Dataset publicly available for downloading and use:
Adams, Z., Bishop, L. and Deakin, S. (2016) ‘CBR Labour Regulation Index (Dataset of 117 Countries)’, in J. Armour, S. Deakin and M. Siems (eds.) CBR Leximetric Datasets (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Data Repository).

3. Leximetrics Quantitative analysis of legal systems
Data coding using content analysis of legal texts

4. Research questions
‘Laws created to protect workers often hurt them’ (World Bank, Doing Business, 2008)
‘Employment regulations are unquestionably necessary not just to protect workers from arbitrary or unfair treatment but to ensure efficient contracting between employers and workers’ (World Bank, Doing Business, 2015)

5. Evidence-based policy in question
Britain’s greatest enemy… the experts’ ( 16/06/10/michael-goves-guide-to- britains-greatest-enemy-the-experts/)
‘Our view is that current modeling practices, in their development and use, are a significant threat to the legitimacy and the utility of science in contested policy environments. A commitment to transparency and parsimony will encourage modelers themselves to focus on parameters, inputs, assumptions, and relationships that are well constrained and understood. Further, the assumption- laden aspects of the system should be clearly spelled out’ (Saltelli and Funtowicz, 2014, 2/andrea/)

6. Principles for constructing leximetric datasets
Theoretical priors should be spelled out
Choices on identification and definition of indicators need to be justified
Weighting and aggregation issues should be addressed
Primary sources should be fully sourced
The means by which values were derived from primary sources should be transparent

7. Steps in data coding
(i) identification of a general phenomenon of interest (‘labour law’)
(ii) development of a conceptual construct (‘regulation’ of labour market relations, both individual and collective) 
(iii) identification of indicators or variables which, singly or together, express the construct in numerical terms 
(iv) development of a coding algorithm which sets out a series of steps to be taken in assigning numerical values to the primary source material 
(v) identification of a measurement scale which is embedded in the algorithm 
(vi) allocation of weights, where necessary or relevant, to the individual variables or indicators
(vii) aggregation of the individual indicators in an index which provides a composite measure of the phenomenon of interest

8. Trends by legal origin

9. Selected OECD countries vs. selected BRICS

10. Use in econometric analysis
No presumption for or against a particular theory of labour law’s impact on the economy
Suitable for panel data and time series analysis
Should be used in conjunction with other institutional datasets (e.g. World Bank, Freedom House data on ‘rule of law’
‘Cambridge equation’ (pooled mean group regression model) most appropriate for dynamic panel data analysis capable of distinguishing between short-run and long-run effects of labour regulation (Pesaran, Shin and Smith)

11. Econometric results
Increases in employment protection scores correlated with higher rate of labour force participation, higher employment, reduced self- employment (in some regressions), higher productivity, lower unemployment, higher labour share of national income

12. Open access Datasets first published online in 2008 (CBR website)
Over 50 papers by third parties citing or using the CBR datasets
Online publication in 2016 of expanded versions of the datasets (
Benefits: feedback from national experts leading to correction of errors, clarification of terms
Risks: third parties re-using the data without adequate attribution to the Cambridge source
On balance the benefits outweigh the costs