Empirical Analyses of Sanction Effectiveness

This quote alludes to the challenges in using current data sets on sanctions without some adjustments. Other challenges include an inability to pinpoint what represents economic coercion’s “contribution” to sanction effectiveness. This chapter continues this text’s thesis that economic statecraft is ultimately macroeconomic, because sanctions are initiated as if they were macroeconomic policy. Further, decoupling the economic contribution from the political and humanitarian effects of statecraft reduces the endogenity problem. However, the endogenity problem is difficult to conquer; endogenity in this model reflects reality. Sanction effects are based on feedback loops surging through the target economy to create a political critical mass for change.