We address a well-known but infrequently discussed problem in the quantitative study of international conflict: Despite immense data collections, prestigious journals, and sophisticated analyses, empirical findings in the literature on international conflict are often unsatisfying. Many...

Some of the most important phenomena in international conflict are coded s "rare events data," binary dependent variables with dozens to thousands of times fewer events, such as wars, coups, etc., than "nonevents". Unfortunately, rare events data are difficult to explain and predict, a problem...

We thank Scott de Marchi, Christopher Gelpi, and Jeffrey Grynaviski (2003; hereinafter dGG) for their careful attention to our work (Beck, King, and Zeng, 2000; hereinafter BKZ) and for raising some important methodological issues that we agree deserve readers' attention. We are pleased that dGG's...