  This article reviews recent advances in addressing empirical identification
issues in cross-country and country-level studies and their implications for
the identification of the effectiveness and consequences of economic sanctions.
I argue that, given the difficulties in assessing causal relationships in
cross-national data, country-level case studies can serve as a useful and
informative complement to cross-national regression studies. However, I also
warn that case studies pose a set of additional potential empirical pitfalls
which can obfuscate rather than clarify the identification of causal mechanisms
at work. Therefore, the most sensible way to read case study evidence is as a
complement rather than as a substitute to cross-national research.
