The Independent Regulatory Commissioner Data Base
Data and Documentation
Graduate Students
NSF Proposal (PDF Format)
Publications (PDF Format)

Overview

The purpose of this project is to authoritatively document each appointment and the sequence of appointments to fifteen federal independent agencies from 1887-2000. This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 00-95962). For each appointment, the data indicates sequential factors, such as date of the nomination or the expiration of the term for the seat, and personal factors, such as the gender or party affiliation of the appointee.  These data are intended to be the counterpart to the appellate and district court biographical databases (Zuk, Barrow & Gryski (ICPSR 6796), Goldman, Gryski & Zuk, respectively).  Given the variety of uses for these data, I expect they will be of interest to other scholars. This web site provides access to these data, as they are updated, together with documentation and infile statements. As described in the codebook, the data may be assembled in such a way that the unit of analysis is either cross-sectional (the appointment or the commissioner) or longitudinal (at any arbitary aggregation of time) or panel data. See the codebook for detailed instructions on using the infile statements.

Agencies Covered in this Study

  • Civil Aeronautics Board (1940-1981) 
  • Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972-2000) 
  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1965-2000) 
  • Federal Communications Commission (1934-2000) & Federal Radio Commission (1928-1934) 
  • Federal Election Commission (1975-2000) 
  • Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (1977-2000) & Federal Power Commission (1930-1977) 
  • Federal Reserve Board of Governors (1914-2000) 
  • Federal Trade Commission (1914-2000) 
  • Interstate Commerce Commission (1887-1995) 
  • National Labor Relations Board (1935-2000)
  • National Transportation Safety Board (1967-2000)
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1974-2000) & Atomic Energy Commission (1954-1974)
  • Securities and Exchange Commission (1935-2000)
last revised 3/10/2005
Questions may be directed to the Principal Investigator, David C. Nixon