Can LLMs Credibly Transform the Creation of Panel Data from Diverse Historical Tables?
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866913844079624192 |
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| author | Bäcker-Peral, Verónica Meursault, Vitaly Severen, Christopher |
| author_facet | Bäcker-Peral, Verónica Meursault, Vitaly Severen, Christopher |
| contents | Multimodal LLMs offer a watershed change for the digitization of historical tables, enabling low-cost processing centered on domain expertise rather than technical skills. We rigorously validate an LLM-based pipeline on a new panel of historical county-level vehicle registrations. This pipeline is 100 times less expensive than outsourcing, reduces critical parsing errors from 40% to 0.3%, and matches human-validated gold standard data with an $R^2$ of 98.6%. Analyses of growth and persistence in vehicle adoption are statistically indistinguishable whether using LLM or gold standard data. LLM-based digitization unlocks complex historical tables, enabling new economic analyses and broader researcher participation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_11599 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Can LLMs Credibly Transform the Creation of Panel Data from Diverse Historical Tables? Bäcker-Peral, Verónica Meursault, Vitaly Severen, Christopher General Economics Economics Multimodal LLMs offer a watershed change for the digitization of historical tables, enabling low-cost processing centered on domain expertise rather than technical skills. We rigorously validate an LLM-based pipeline on a new panel of historical county-level vehicle registrations. This pipeline is 100 times less expensive than outsourcing, reduces critical parsing errors from 40% to 0.3%, and matches human-validated gold standard data with an $R^2$ of 98.6%. Analyses of growth and persistence in vehicle adoption are statistically indistinguishable whether using LLM or gold standard data. LLM-based digitization unlocks complex historical tables, enabling new economic analyses and broader researcher participation. |
| title | Can LLMs Credibly Transform the Creation of Panel Data from Diverse Historical Tables? |
| topic | General Economics Economics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11599 |