Corrigendum to Network Interdependencies and the Evolution of the International Arms Trade

• DOI: 10.1177/0022002720926418
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Corrigendum

Corrigendum

Corrigendum to Network

Interdependencies and

the Evolution of the

International Arms Trade

Thurner, Paul W., Christian S. Schmid, Skyler J. Cranmer, and Go¨ran Kauermann.

2019. Network Interdependencies and the Evolution of the International Arms

Trade. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (7): 17 36-64. (Original DOI: 10.1177/

0022002718801965)

An internal reanalysis of our replication package revealed that we erroneously

defined the valued relational variables ‘Path Dependency’, ‘Geographic Distance’,

and ‘Absolute Difference in Polity Score’ as binary variables. This was the conse-

quence of using the function network in the R-package statnet in the code lines 1888-

1916. By default, this function translates valued cell entries into dichotomous ones.

We corrected this miscoding and reran our files. For ‘Geographic Distance’ we take

the original values from Gleditsch’s Distance Between Capital Cities dataset (http://

privatewww.essex.ac.uk/ksg/data-5.html). We provide all corrected figures from the

original article in order to make the results comparable.

As seen in these figures, only the three erroneously defined variables change

substantially in size and statistical significance as compared to the original anal-

ysis. All other coefficients maintained similar ranges and exhibit nearly identical

patterns of statistical significance. A partial exception is the variable Defense

Agreements: the weakening of its impact after the mid-1990s is now more pro-

nounced. Therefore, the trade-off between security and economic considerations

weakens even more in this period, as can be seen in the new Figure 6. Otherweise,

the conclusions in the paper can be maintained except for those related to the three

flawed variables.

The altered conclusions that we have to draw as a result of this reanalysis are:

a) ‘Logged Geographical Distance’ is now relevant in this sectoral trade net-

work, just as it is in the international trade network in general. Geographic

distance constitutes a transaction cost with the importance of the frictions

varying over time. These frictions increase in the period from 1958 to 1963.

They then decrease until the mid-1970, oscillate until 2000, and re-increase

remarkably in the following eight years, before they weaken again in the

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(7-8) 1548-1552

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002720926418

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr