The recent surge in studies analysing spatial dependence in political science has gone hand-in-hand with increased attention paid to the choice of estimation technique. In comparison, specification choice has been relatively neglected, even though it leads to equally, if not more, serious...

Summary Famine mortality is preventable by government action and yet some famines kill. We develop a political theory of famine mortality based on the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. [Bueno de Mesquita, B. B., Morrow, J. M., Siverson, R. M., & Smith, A. (2002). Political...

Americans are a major target of international terrorism. Yet, terrorists from some countries are much more likely to attack American citizens than terrorists from other countries. Similarly, anti-American terrorism from a specific foreign country is much more prevalent during certain periods...

Summary Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. We examine why many governments do not. First, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to investments in mortality prevention are...

Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorien gelten als erfolgsversprechende Ansätze zur Erklärung sozialen Handelns und der Entwicklung politischer und sozialer Prozesse verbessern und Erklärungen möglich machen. Das Jahrbuch versteht sich als Plattform zur Förderung der interdisziplinären...

Spatial dependence exists whenever the expected utility of one unit of analysis is affected by the decisions or behavior made by other units of analysis. Spatial dependence is ubiquitous in social relations and interactions. Yet, there are surprisingly few social science studies accounting for...

If terror attacks from groups of one country are followed by similar attacks on the same target from groups of other similar countries, then this could be the consequence of contagion. However, just because one terror incident follows another does not necessarily imply that one is caused by the...

Conflicts between European Union (EU) members about enlargement result from its redistributive effects. EU members are more likely to suffer from enlargement if they profit from EU transfers and if they are relatively close to applicant countries in which unemployment is significantly higher...

We argue that the European currency union (ECU) reduced the de facto monetary policy autonomy of EU countries abstaining from introducing the euro. The large share of imports from euro zone countries renders a close alignment of monetary policy to the interest rate set by the European Central...