The impact of US sanctions on poverty Neuenkirch, Matthias; Neumeier, Florian
Journal of development economics,
July 2016, 2016-07-00, 20160701, Volume:
121
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In this paper, we analyze the effect of US economic sanctions on the target countries' poverty gap during the period 1982–2011. Econometrically, we employ a matching approach to account for ...differences in the countries' economic and political environment and the likelihood of being exposed to US sanctions. Our results indicate that US sanctions are adversely affecting those living in poverty as we observe a 3.8 percentage point (pp) larger poverty gap in sanctioned countries compared to a control group that is as close as possible in terms of observable pretreatment characteristics. In addition, we show that the impact of sanctions on poverty (i) increases with the severity of sanctions, (ii) is larger for multilateral sanctions than for unilateral sanctions imposed by only the United States, and (iii) is long-lasting as the poverty gap increases over the first 21years of a sanction regime.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
We review a number of developments and trends in the literature on economic sanctions. We discuss salient contributions to the theoretical literature, data collection, and empirical work on the ...impact, effectiveness and success of sanctions in Economics and Political Science. Our interdisciplinary perspective highlights the existence of a stark contrast in the ways the two disciplines view and analyze sanctions. Taking advantage of this perspective, we identify potential directions for future work. Most importantly, we argue that moving toward a better understanding of the causes and consequences of economic sanctions requires a much tighter integration of concepts from Political Science and Economics and a more extensive interdisciplinary collaboration.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This article examines whether American drone-based targeted killing program represents a fundamentally new challenge to the traditional legal and ethical standards of armed conflict. It argues that ...the novelty of drones flows less from the technology itself than from the Obama administration's articulation of a presumptive right of anticipatory self-defense, which allows it to strike anywhere in the world where al Qaeda and its allies are present. It highlights five new legal and ethical dimensions to the Obama administration's drones policy, all of which may lower the traditional barriers to the use of force if other actors begin to follow contemporary American practice.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article examines the effectiveness of public statements of resolve in international conflict. Several prominent theories, including domestic audience cost theory and theories regarding ...international reputation, suggest that issuing resolved statements can help a leader achieve a more favorable outcome in conflict bargaining. Because they entail costs for backing down, these statements are believed to credibly convey resolve to an adversary. This can help to alleviate the uncertainty created by private information about resolve and persuade the adversary to back down. Despite the prevalence of this theoretical logic, the effectiveness of statements of resolve at influencing conflict outcomes has rarely been subjected to direct tests, and some recent empirical work has raised doubts about statements' effectiveness. This article is the first to directly examine the effect of resolved statements on conflict outcomes using large-N analysis. It introduces original data, created using content analysis, which directly measure the level of resolved statements made by US presidents during militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Analysis of these data demonstrates that a higher level of resolved statements is indeed associated with a greater chance of prevailing in disputes. This finding is substantively significant and robust, providing support for the argument that public statements play an important role in international conflict.
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BFBNIB, INZLJ, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
In this article, we present a new theory that, given the economic consequences of military spending, some governments may use military spending as a means of advancing their domestic non-military ...objectives. Based on evidence that governments can use military spending as welfare policy in disguise, we argue that the role of ideology in shaping military spending is more complicated than simple left-right politics. We also present a theory that strategic elites take advantage of opportunities presented by international events, leading us to expect governments that favor more hawkish foreign policy policies to use low-level international conflicts as opportunities for increasing military spending. Using pooled time-series data from 19 advanced democracies in the post—World War II period, we find that government ideology, measured as welfare and international positions, interacts with the international security environment to affect defense spending.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, INZLJ, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
The link between natural resources and conflict has been extensively analysed by the empirical literature. Yet, there is disagreement on both the existence and the type of relationship connecting ...resources to conflict. Existing research has focused on demonstrating the impact of resource scarcity or abundance on the risk of conflict, but no effort has explored the reasons behind the persisting disagreement among scholars. This paper seeks to remedy this imbalance by conducting a meta-analysis of the empirical literature that investigates the link between natural resources and conflict. We adopt an econometric approach to analyse > 900 estimates from 41 articles. Our results show that both resource scarcity and abundance are associated with a higher probability of conflict. The direction and magnitude of the relationship depends on the type of resources and whether climate variables are controlled for. Specifically, the impact of the scarcity of agriculturally related resources, such as land and vegetation, seems to be mediated by climate variables. We also find that the way conflicts and resources are operationalized together with methodological choices and model specifications, greatly influence the probability of finding a significant relationship between conflicts and resources.
•Evidence from empirical studies suggests robust link between resources and conflict.•Climate influences the relationship between resource scarcity and conflict.•Methodological features of the studies affect findings.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Numerous prominent theories have relied on the concept of "audience costs" as a central causal mechanism in their arguments about international conflict, but scholars have had greater difficulty in ...demonstrating the efficacy and even the existence of such costs outside the bounds of game theory and the political psychology laboratory. We suggest that the audience costs argument focuses too narrowly on the likelihood that leaders will be removed from office by domestic constituencies for failing to make good on threats. Instead, we argue that scholars should ground these arguments on Alastair Smith's (1998) broader concept of "competency costs." Our analysis of presidential legislative success from 1953 to 2001 demonstrates the existence of foreign policy competency costs by showing that public disapproval of presidential handling of militarized interstate disputes has a significant and substantial negative impact on the president's ability to move legislation on domestic issues through Congress.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, INZLJ, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
While sanctions have been an increasingly popular instrument of Western foreign policy over the past several decades, retaliatory measures by non‐Western targets of Western sanctions are a more ...recent development. In this study, I focus on the first such incident in recent history: the Russian retaliatory embargo imposed in August 2014 in response to the anti‐Russian sanctions that have been in place since March 2014. I formulate a comprehensive approach to analysing the impacts of such retaliations on trade and how retaliating countries deal with lost trade. Towards that goal, I use a quadruple difference approach with high‐dimensional fixed effects to disentangle various effects of the retaliatory embargo on the extensive and intensive margins of trade. I find that such retaliation comes at a cost to both the retaliating country and the target of retaliation, while not being effective as Russian sanctions are still in place today. I estimate that the total loss of trade from such retaliation amounts to about 42 billion USD in the first 1.5 years after the imposition of the embargo. The disturbances caused by such retaliation destabilise bilateral trade by causing negative spillovers and significantly increase the costs of retaliation as an economic policy or political strategy. Note: This paper was written prior to the Russian invasion in Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
We develop and test an economic theory of insurgency motivated by the informal literature and by recent military doctrine. We model a three-way contest between violent rebels, a government seeking to ...minimize violence by mixing service provision and coercion, and civilians deciding whether to share information about insurgents. We test the model using panel data from Iraq on violence against Coalition and Iraqi forces, reconstruction spending, and community characteristics (sectarian status, socioeconomic grievances, and natural resource endowments). Our results support the theory’s predictions: improved service provision reduces insurgent violence, particularly for smaller projects and since the “surge” began in 2007.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
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