Biased Sanctions? Methodological Change in Economic Sanction Reconsidered and its Implications

We investigate the influence of case selection and (re)coding for two vintages of a key resource for research on economic sanctions: the Peterson Institute data base reported in Hufbauer et al. (2nd edition in 1990 and 3rd edition in 2007, often identified by their abbreviations HSE and HSEO). The Peterson Institute has not transparently reported about these changes, These changes make it more likely to find sanction success. A multivariate probit analysis establishes upward bias related to modest policy change, duration and cost to target and downward bias for regime change, military impairment, companion policies and cost to the sender.