Redistributable. This source is served as canonical Parquet under the license below, with attribution and provenance preserved.

Coverage

Series catalogued

783,100

Licensing & provenance

License: cc-by-sa-4.0-vdem
License URL: https://www.v-dem.net/about/faq/
Required attribution: V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg
Redistribution: Permitted (served here)
Commercial use: Yes
Modification: Permitted
Provider homepage: https://www.v-dem.net
Provider terms: https://www.v-dem.net/about/faq/

Access & mirrors

Download: Select & download vdem series as CSV →
API: Get a free API key, then GET /v1/series/<id>.csv
Canonical landing: https://econdatalibrary.com/vdem
Update cadence: annual (target — not yet automated)
Automated refresh: not yet wired — the data here is the verified initial load. See the Source Status board.
Update strategy: overwrite if changed
Storage layout: two parquet files: data/clean_full/vdem/vdem.parquet (~40.6 MB, the big ~27M-obs core) and vparty.parquet (~4.1 MB). Schema: series_key (string), obs_date date32 (Dec 31 of year), value float64. Keys: VDEM:{variable}:{country_text_id}. (Plus a _vdem_log.txt sidecar.)

Full description

V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) ingest — downloads vdem.RData from the vdemdata GitHub R package and converts to long-format parquet. V-Dem v16 has ~500 country-years × ~4000 variables = ~27M obs in long format. We download the RData directly from GitHub (no account needed). Source: https://github.com/vdeminstitute/vdemdata (CC BY 4.0 for most indices) Output: data/clean_full/vdem/vdem.parquet (series_key, obs_date, value) Run: python jobs/ingest_vdem.py

Structured metadata

schema.org/Dataset (Google Dataset Search)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy), University of Gothenburg",
  "description": "HOS appoints cabinet in practice; Stronger civil liberties characteristics. V-Dem, University of Gothenburg. 783,100 series. Free download.",
  "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/vdem",
  "identifier": "vdem",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true,
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com"
  },
  "includedInDataCatalog": {
    "@type": "DataCatalog",
    "@id": "https://econdatalibrary.com/#catalog",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/catalog"
  },
  "creator": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "V-Dem, University of Gothenburg",
    "url": "https://www.v-dem.net"
  },
  "license": "https://www.v-dem.net/about/faq/",
  "keywords": [
    "Governance & Institutions",
    "vdem"
  ],
  "creditText": "V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/econdatalibrary-vdem",
    "https://zenodo.org/communities/econdatalibrary"
  ],
  "distribution": [
    {
      "@type": "DataDownload",
      "name": "vdem — CSV",
      "encodingFormat": "text/csv",
      "contentUrl": "https://econdatalibrary.com/download.html?source=vdem",
      "license": "https://www.v-dem.net/about/faq/"
    }
  ]
}

Croissant (ML-ready, schema.org JSON-LD)

{
  "@context": {
    "@language": "en",
    "@vocab": "https://schema.org/",
    "cr": "http://mlcommons.org/croissant/",
    "data": {
      "@id": "cr:data",
      "@type": "@json"
    },
    "dataType": {
      "@id": "cr:dataType",
      "@type": "@vocab"
    },
    "sc": "https://schema.org/",
    "conformsTo": "dct:conformsTo",
    "dct": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
  },
  "@type": "sc:Dataset",
  "conformsTo": "http://mlcommons.org/croissant/1.0",
  "name": "vdem",
  "description": "HOS appoints cabinet in practice; Stronger civil liberties characteristics. V-Dem, University of Gothenburg. 783,100 series. Free download.",
  "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com/vdem",
  "creator": {
    "@type": "sc:Organization",
    "name": "V-Dem, University of Gothenburg",
    "url": "https://www.v-dem.net"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "sc:Organization",
    "name": "Econ Data Library",
    "url": "https://econdatalibrary.com"
  },
  "license": "https://www.v-dem.net/about/faq/",
  "keywords": [
    "Governance & Institutions"
  ],
  "distribution": [
    {
      "@type": "cr:FileObject",
      "@id": "vdem-csv",
      "name": "vdem-csv",
      "description": "Per-series CSV, downloadable with a free API key.",
      "contentUrl": "https://econdatalibrary.com/download.html?source=vdem",
      "encodingFormat": "text/csv"
    }
  ]
}