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Many of the states adopted the 0.08 BAC per se standard between 1994 and 2008. In fact, all states adopted this standard by 2007. Thus, a panel data set of data from all of the 50 states and the District of Columbia should offer enough variance in the this variable to enable us to evaluate the effectiveness of the law. The Department of Transportation and the Census Bureau provide enough data to enable us to construct a reasonable data set for all of the states for this period. What should ensue here is a detailed description of all of the variables in the data set along with the sources used to collect the data. However, we leave the construction of this part of the paper to you and resort to summarizing the variables included in the data set in Table 2. The data are available in the file the "Data set" sheet in Auto_fatalities_data.xls ; the definition of the FIPS codes are included in a sheet named "State FIPS codes" in the same file. Table 3 defines the variables included by column in the "Data set" sheet of Auto_fatalities_data.xls.
Care needs to be taken when gathering the data because some sources list the states in alphabetical order by the full name of the state, the way that the FIPS codes orders the states. In this case Deleware preceeds the District of Columbia. In other sources the states are listed in alphabetical order of the each state's abreviated title. In these cases the District of Columbia preceeds Deleware because DC preceeds DE. This sorting of the states causes several states to appear in an order different than they appear in the FIPS codes. A similar problem occurs with working with county level data because some government sources list all county names beginning with Mc ahead of all other county names beginning with M while other sources list county names beginning with Mc after county names beginning with Ma. In both cases order all of the state or county data by their FIPS code prevents confusing the order of the observations.
| Variable | Source | Period |
| FIPS code identifying each state | [link] | 1994-2008 |
| Fatalities from automobile accidents | (External Link) | 1994-2008 |
| Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles driven | www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| State gas tax rate per gallon in dollars | www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics | 1994-2008 |
| Real state gas tax rate per gallon in 2009 dollars | State gas tax rate per gallon in dollars divided by the CPI with a base year of 2009 | 1994-2008 |
| State cigarette tax per pack in dollars, | State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010 | 2000-2008 |
| State tax on spirits | State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010 | 2000-2008 |
| State tax wine | State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010 | 2000-2008 |
| State tax on beer | State Sales, Gasoline, Cigarette, and Alcohol Tax Rates by State, 2000-2010 | 2000-2008 |
| Vehicle miles driven on state rural interstates | Table VM-202 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Total vehicle miles driven on state rural roads | Table VM-202 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Vehicle miles driven on state urban interstates | Table VM-202 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Total vehicle miles driven on state urban roads | Table VM-202 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers under the age of 20 | Table VM-202 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers under the age of 25 | Table DL-22 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers over age 70 | Table DL-22 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers over age 75 | Table DL-22 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers over age 80 | Table DL-22 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Percent of the registered drivers over age 85 | Table DL-22 for various years on: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov | 1994-2008 |
| State mean family income in 2009 dollars This variable is the mean family income in a state divided by the Consumer Price Index for 2009. The CPI is from Table B-60 of the Economic Report of the President, 2010 . | http://www.census.gov | 1994-2008 |
| Dummy variable = 1 if the state has passed the 0.08 per se BAC law; 0 otherwise | NHTSA, Regional Office. Updated as of December 1, 2008. | 1994-2008 |
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