Biased Sanctions? Methodological Change in Economic Sanctions 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 database reported in Hufbauer et al. (second edition in 1990 and third 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.