Special Economics of Development Seminar - Dr Peter van Bergeijk

The recent publication of the third edition of Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Hufbauer et al. 2008, the major data source on the effectiveness of economic sanctions) offers a unique opportunity to see whether the econometric results regarding the determinants of success and failure of economic sanctions still hold. A logit analysis of 147 sanction cases that were implemented in the years 1946-2002 reveals that the probability that a sanction succeeds increases in trade linkage and decreases in duration of the sanctions. Moreover, economic sanctions against autocratically ruled targets have a lower probability to succeed. Importantly, a structural break appears to have occurred in the early 1990s, possibly due to the end of the superpower conflict.