'Could the literature on the economic determinants of sanctions be biased?'

Three students at the International Institute of Social Studies, Alemayehu Reta, Gabriela Benalcazar Jativa and Patrick Kimararungu, received the Award for the Best Research Paper Project in 2018 for their paper published in Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy. 

Supervized by Binyam Demena and Peter van Bergeijk, the article 'Could the literature on the economic determinants of sanctions be biased?' has a sobering message for those who believe in the force of sanctions.

A synthesis report of a research paper project on a meta-analysis of economic sanctions, the paper estimates bias in the empirical literature and concludes that it is so large that the impact of trade and sanction duration is not significant.

The authors conclude that despite more than three decades of empirical research on economic sanctions, no consensus has yet emerged on the impact of the variables that are thought to determine the success of economic sanctions. 

More information

See also this post on the ISS blog, BlISS - Why do economic sanctions work? Do they? Will they?

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