U.S. City Financial Statistics, 1924–1938

Annual revenue, expenditure and debt of U.S. cities.

UnitCity-year

Years1924–1938

FrequencyAnnual

Cities per year519–819

Download on openICPSR DOI V2 · 2024-07-01 Free openICPSR sign-in required to download.

Overview

A city-level panel of municipal revenue, expenditure and debt, reported annually from 1924 to 1938.

Variables are aggregated to comparable categories across sources. A separate file documents how the categories line up across the underlying publications.

Funding: Economic History Association.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau, Financial Statistics of Cities (annual).
State archival records of municipal finances.

Coverage notes

Disaggregated data, especially for Massachusetts and New York, are available from the author on request.

Files

File	Type	Size
`city_fin_24_38_icpsr.dta`	Stata	6.6 MB
`city_fin_24_38_icpsr.xlsx`	Excel	4.7 MB
`codebook.docx`	Codebook	32.1 KB
`comparability_across_sources_icpsr.xlsx`	Crosswalk	15.1 KB

All files are in the openICPSR project, version V2.

Variables

Variable names, labels and units are documented in codebook.docx, distributed with the data on openICPSR.

Research

Janas, P. (2026). “Public Goods Under Financial Distress.” Journal of Financial Economics, 176, 104205. Journal · NBER WP 34011 · Replication package

Citation

Please cite the paper(s) listed above, if any, and the openICPSR project:

openICPSR citation

Janas, Pawel. U.S. City Financial Statistics, 1924 - 1938. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-07-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/E207244V2

BibTeX — dataset

@misc{janas_city_finances,
  author    = {Janas, Pawel},
  title     = {{U.S.} City Financial Statistics, 1924--1938},
  publisher = {Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]},
  address   = {Ann Arbor, MI},
  year      = {2024},
  version   = {V2},
  doi       = {10.3886/E207244V2},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.3886/E207244V2}
}

BibTeX — paper

@article{janas2026,
  author  = {Janas, P.},
  title   = {Public Goods Under Financial Distress},
  journal = {Journal of Financial Economics},
  volume  = {176},
  pages   = {104205},
  year    = {2026}
}

Version history

Version	Released	DOI
V2 (current)	2024-07-01	10.3886/E207244V2