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Can LLMs Credibly Transform the Creation of Panel Data from Diverse Historical Tables?

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  • Ver'onica Backer-Peral
  • Vitaly Meursault
  • Christopher Severen

Abstract

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.

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  • Ver'onica Backer-Peral & Vitaly Meursault & Christopher Severen, 2025. "Can LLMs Credibly Transform the Creation of Panel Data from Diverse Historical Tables?," Papers 2505.11599, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2505.11599
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