88-241, Spring 2000

Due: Tuesday, April 11^th

Readings

"Grasping the Democratic Peace," Russett, pp. 72-86

Questions

Type up short answers to the following questions about the Russett reading, and turn them in as hardcopy at the beginning of class on Tuesday, April 11th.

1. What is the dependent variable in Russett's paper? What is the main independent variable?

2. What are the units in the sample?

3. List 3 counfounders that Russett considers. For each confounder, calculate the bias. That is, for each confounder: consider the following graph:

where b is the sign of the correlation between the confounder and the independent variable, and c the sign of the effect of the confounder on the dependent variable. Make a plausible guess as to the signs of b and c, and then describe what would happen to the estimate of the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable were these confounders left unmeasured.

4. What is the sign of the bivariate relationship between alliance and conflict? What is the sign of the relationship once possible confounders are controlled for?