Modeling selection bias in studies of sanctions efficacy

Sanctions rarely work but they continue to be used frequently by policymakers. I argue that previous studies of sanctions ignore the problem of strategic censoring by focusing only on cases of observed sanctions, In this paper, I develop a unified model of sanction imposition and success and test it using a simultaneous equation censored probit model. This selection-corrected sanction model finds that the process by which sanctions are imposed is linked to the process by which some succeed while others fail, and that the unmeasured factors that lead to sanction imposition are negatively related to their success.