Network Modeling of International Peace and Trade Data

尽管人们希望关注全球范围内政治和经济的相互联系性质，但大多数实证研究都假设，主要行为体不仅是主权国家，而且它们之间的关系是独立的。这意味着，例如，在研究贸易时往往没有考虑到一国与另一国贸易的相互依存关系。同样，在国际政治中，人们常常假设一个国家的政策完全独立于另一个国家的政策，尽管我们可以观察到它们之间的协商。统计研究通常假设这些类型的依赖关系可以被忽略。相比之下，本研究将采用新开发的统计方法来揭示贸易和国际政治之间迄今为止隐藏的相互依赖关系。该研究将开发和估计依赖二元数据的统计模型，同时估计具有相同发起者的行动的相关性，具有相同接收者的行动的相关性，以及一对行动者和涉及三个或更多行动者聚类的三阶依赖关系之间的行动的互惠性。调查人员将重新审视民主和平假说的一些主张，看看它们是否可以部分地用各国行动之间的依赖关系来解释。他们还将重新审查国际贸易的标准模型，以衡量是否可以在贸易模式相互依赖的背景下更好地理解国际商业。初步结果表明，通过关注以国际贸易和国际冲突与合作为代表的二元数据中的依赖关系，可以获得相当大的杠杆作用。这种方法的应用有望改变政治学、地理学和经济学中二元数据或交易数据的实证研究。这样做可能有助于重新审查国际依赖对国际合作和商业的影响。了解贸易国之间的第二和第三级依赖关系，将有助于更清楚地了解全球机会和阻碍全球贸易水平提高的障碍。

Despite the desire to focus on the interconnected nature of politics and economics at the global scale, most empirical studies assume that the major actors are not only sovereign countries, but also that their relationships are independent. This means, for example, that trade is often studied without taking into account the interdependence of one country's trade with another. Similarly in international politics, it is often assumed that the policies of one country are entirely independent of the policies in another, even though we may observe consultation between them. Statistical studies have typically assumed that these kinds of dependencies can be ignored. In contrast, this research will employ newly developed statistical methods to reveal these heretofore hidden interdependencies among both trade and international politics. The research will develop and estimate statistical models for dependent dyadic data that simultaneously estimate the correlation of actions having the same initiator, the correlation of actions having the same recipient, as well as the reciprocity of actions between a pair of actors and third-order dependencies involving the clustering of three or more actors. The investigators will reexamine some of the claims of the democratic peace hypothesis to see whether they may be explained in part by the dependencies among the actions of countries. They also will reexamine standard models of international trade to gauge whether international commerce can be better understood in the context of dependencies among trading patterns. Preliminary results suggest that there is considerable leverage to be gained by focusing on the dependencies in dyadic data of the kind represented by international trade as well as international conflict and cooperation.The application of this approach has the promise of transforming empirical studies of dyadic, or transactional, data in political science, geography, and economics. In so doing, it may help to reenergize examination of the impacts of international dependencies upon international cooperation and commerce. Understanding the second and third order dependencies among trading countries will help provide a clearer picture of the global opportunities and barriers to increased levels of global trade.