The Power to Hurt and the Effectiveness of International Sanctions

Success of economic sanctions threats: coercion, information and commitment

“…For example, recent EU-Russia sanctions, where Russia's main export (natural gas) was excluded from sanctions (Giumelli 2017), show that goods or services that form a large share of bilateral trade may not be covered by a sanction regime and, consequently, aggregated trade data may suffer from low validity as an indicator in studies of economic coercion. 16 We have conducted an additional robustness test using the data on target's expected economic cost from Kavaklı, Chatagnier, and Hatipoğlu (2020). The results are largely consistent with our main findings; we observe that a higher level of economic complexity and more market power of a target state in relation to a sender results in a lower success rate of threats and imposed sanction (and, like in our main findings, both tend to follow a similar trend).…”

How the possibility of a fight-back strategy affects the consequences of a sanctions regime

“…Some of these studies have resulted in codified and cohesive data banks of sanction cases (Hufbauer et al, 2007;Morgan et al, 2014;Peksen, 2019;Portela, 2016;Rapelanoro & Bali, 2020;Tyll, Pernica, & Arltová, 2018;UN Targeted Sanctions Qualitative Database, 2014). 2) Using the data banks mentioned above, empirical studies investigate the relationship between different parameters in sanction cases and test their assumptions about the effectiveness of the sanctions and other factors influencing the success of a sanctions regime (Hellquist, 2016;Hufbauer et al, 2007;Jeong, 2018;Jing, Kaempfer, & Lowenberg, 2003;Kaempfer & Lowenberg, 2007;Kavaklı, Chatagnier, & Hatipoğlu, 2020;Lam, 1990;Lektzian & Souva, 2001;Lohmann, 2016;Veebel & Markus, 2018b;Whang, Mclean, & Kuberski, 2013). Even the effect of sanctions on the energy efficiency of the target country has been discussed.…”

Tariffs and Politics: Evidence from Trump's Trade Wars

“…Elliott and Hufbauer, 1999;Eaton and Engers, 1992;Ahn and Ludema, 2017)) understands sanctions as a political tool to induce compliance. In a closely related paper, Kavaklı et al (2017) find that comparative advantage in exports and domestic production capabilities determine a countries' ability to maximize the economic impact while minimizing the domestic costs of sanctions. In this literature, Dashti-Gibson et al (1997) studies the success factors of economic sanctions, while Marinov (2005) and Allen (2008) provide evidence that sanctions increase the probability of leadership change.…”

“…This lends credence to the idea that economic effects of retaliatory tariffs can shift political support. Yet, a likely necessary condition is that retaliation is sufficiently targeted (see Kavaklı et al, 2017;Marinov, 2005).…”

“…In the second part, we investigate both the feasibility of political targeting and study the extent to which countries are managing the harm retaliation may afford on their own economy. In the context of trade disputes the structure of trade between countries may afford an important constraint (see Kavaklı et al, 2017).…”