Strategic Reporting: A Formal Model of Biases in Conflict Data –

During violent battle, governments might acknowledge their use of illegitimate violence (e.g., noncombatant casualties) regardless that such violence can depress civilian help. Why would they achieve this? We mannequin the strategic incentives affecting authorities disclosures of illegitimate violence within the face of potential NGO investigations, the place disclosures, investigations, and help are endogenous. We spotlight implications for the evaluation of battle information generated from authorities and NGO reviews and for the emergence of presidency transparency. Underreporting bias in authorities disclosures positively correlates with underreporting bias in NGO reviews. Furthermore, governments exhibit larger underreporting bias relative to NGOs when NGOs face increased investigative prices. We additionally illustrate why it’s troublesome to estimate detrimental results of illegitimate violence on help utilizing authorities information: with massive true results, governments have incentives to hide such violence, resulting in strategic attenuation bias. Finally, there’s a U-shaped relationship between NGO investigative prices and authorities payoffs.