Force and ambiguity: evaluating sources for cross-national research – the case of military interventions

Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín and Andrea González Peña

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper discusses the analytical problems associated with the increasing use of numerical databases in quantitative cross-national research. The authors highlight the need for a better understanding of the way these databases are constructed and their inherent ambiguities and they examine the existing critical literature. The paper makes a case study of data on military interventions and analyses the problems of classification that the authors identified in several well-known databases. The paper concludes that more attention should be given to modelling uncertainty rather than attempting to achieve clear-cut precision.

JEL-codes: C1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2009-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28494/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:28494

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager (lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk).