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The recent article by Carrubba, Yuen, and Zorn (2007) (CYZ) attempts to relate the strategic random utility models in Signorino (1999, 2002, 2003) and in Signorino and Yilmaz (2003) to existing game theory practice and to existing statistical techniques. It contributes to this literature by reminding us that comparative statics analysis can be applied to the equilibria of these models. There are a number of claims in CYZ, however, that require clarification. In particular, the article's primary claim is that comparative statics analysis, in combination with one of three proposed statistical estimators, provides a simpler alternative to methods previously advocated. This claim (or combination of claims) is incorrect. When one examines the procedure CYZ recommends, it is no simpler for substantive researchers than anything previously recommended. Moreover, none of the proposed estimators are new: they are exactly the same methods introduced in Signorino (1999, 2003), in Signorino and Yilmaz (2003), in Signorino, Walker, and Bas (2002), and in Bas, Signorino, and Walker (2007).

Social scientists are often confronted with theories in which one or more actors make choices over a discrete set of options. In this article, I generalize a broad class of statistical discrete choice models, with both well-known and new nonstrategic and strategic special cases. I demonstrate how to derive statistical models from theoretical discrete choice models and, in doing so, I address the statistical implications of three sources of uncertainty: agent error, private information about payoffs, and regressor error. For strategic and some nonstrategic choice models, the three types of uncertainty produce different statistical models. In these cases, misspecifying the type of uncertainty leads to biased and inconsistent estimates, and to incorrect inferences based on estimated probabilities.

Although strategic interaction is at the heart of most international relations theory, it has largely been missing from much empirical analysis in the field. Typical applications of logit and probit to theories of international conflict generally do not capture the structure of the strategic interdependence implied by those theories. I demonstrate how to derive statistical discrete choice models of international conflict that directly incorporate the theorized strategic interaction. I show this for a simple crisis interaction model and then use Monte Carlo analysis to show that logit provides estimates with incorrect substantive interpretations as well as fitted values that can be far from the true values. Finally, I reanalyze a well-known game-theoretic model of war, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's (1992) international interaction game. My results indicate that there is at best modest empirical support for their model.

Although strategic interaction is at the heart of most international relations theory, it has largely been missing from much empirical analysis in the field. Typical applications of logit and probit to theories of international conflict generally do not capture the structure of the strategic interdependence implied by those theories. I demonstrate how to derive statistical discrete choice models of international conflict that directly incorporate the theorized strategic interaction. I show this for a simple crisis interaction model and then use Monte Carlo analysis to show that logit provides estimates with incorrect substantive interpretations as well as fitted values that can be far from the true values. Finally, I reanalyze a well-known game-theoretic model of war, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's (1992) international interaction game. My results indicate that there is at best modest empirical support for their model. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

The repeated prisioner's dilemma is representative of a broad range of situations in international security and trade. This article examines the effects of asymmetric noise on the emergence and maintenance of cooperation under such conditions. The results show that positive and negative asymmetric noise have very different effects on strategy performance. For forgiving strategies, positive noise provides a stimulus out of perpetual defection or unsynchronized retaliations, but also opens them to exploitation. For provocable strategies, negative noise triggers unsynchronized retaliations or perpetual defection, although this may be tempered by generosity and contrition. The effects of neutral noise reflects the signature of each asymmetric noise type. Of the strategies examined, contrite tit-for-tat (CTFT) is generally one of the best performers in both homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. Moreover, one generally sees the evolutionary models moving from heterogeneous bilateral interaction to cooperative norms of behavior, often including or even dominated by CTFT.

We consider the problem of choosing between rival statistical models that are non-nested in terms of their functional forms. We assess the ability of two tests, one parametric and one distribution-free, to discriminate between such models. Our Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that both tests are, to varying degrees, able to discriminate between strategic and non-strategic discrete choice models. The distribution-free test appears to have greater relative power in small samples.

We present a unified theory and test of extended immediate deterrence—unified in the sense that we employ our theoretical deterrence model as our statistical model in the empirical analysis. The theoretical model is a straightforward formalization of the deterrence logic in Huth (1988) and Huth and Russett (1984), coupled with private information concerning utilities. Our statistical analysis suggests that the attacker and defender's decisions are influenced by the balance of forces, nuclear weapons, defender‐protege military alliances, arms transfers, and trade, as well as the regime types of those involved. Many of these findings contradict previous research by Huth (1988) and Huth and Russett (1988). We find that many of the variables involved in the deterrence calculus are nonmonotonically linked to the probability of deterrence success or war. We illustrate the results with case studies of the Soviet‐Japanese dispute over Manchukuo (1937–1938) and the Berlin Blockade (1948).