Revisiting Predictions of War Duration

We reexamine the fit of Bennett and Stam's 1996 model of war duration, correcting errors in the reported estimates of prediction accuracy. We discuss how to assess fit in the absence of standard or widely accepted measures of fit in duration models. We introduce a proportional reduction in error measure for duration models and report new estimates of model fit from the Bennett and Stam model. The model does significantly reduce prediction error relative to a naive model.