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Many have noted the new @USGAO report on economic sanctions.
While sanctions are a common tool of coercion, there is a time when sanctions are surprisingly NOT used: against a war opponent 🤔
[THREAD]
gao.gov/products/GAO-2…
While sanctions are a common tool of coercion, there is a time when sanctions are surprisingly NOT used: against a war opponent 🤔
[THREAD]
gao.gov/products/GAO-2…
To be clear, it is indeed common for war opponents to cut off economic ties with one another. After all, this is the foundation for the "Commercial Peace" literature
But not always! Some states will continue to trade even when fighting a war with one another 🤯
This point was made by Katherine Barbieri and Jack Levy in....
This point was made by Katherine Barbieri and Jack Levy in....
The @JPR_journal piece led to some "dialogue" and "criticism" b/w economists Charles H. Anderton & John Carter (@holy_cross) on one side...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
But following that work in the early 00's, not much since.
Into this void steps recent @UChicagoPoliSci PhD Mariya Grinberg and her dissertation! 
Mariya seeks to identify the conditions under which a state will choose to continue permitting trade to an enemy at war.
She does so by building on the idea of "Security Externalities".
She does so by building on the idea of "Security Externalities".
The idea of security externalities is found in Thomas Schelling's 1958 International Economics (because pretty much ALL ides in IR can be traced back to Schelling).
In the book, Schelling dedicates an entire chapter to ``Economic Warfare and Strategic Trade Controls,'' whereby he means ``economic measures intended to damage other countries, or to protect a nation's own economy against the hostile economic policies of others.''
Schelling criticizes the notion that one can clearly distinguish those goods that are more important to a country's military economy from those goods that are more important to a country's civilian economy.
For Schelling, even if it is possible to identify a good as ``purely'' for civilian purposes, it could still aid in bolstering the military potential of a country (perhaps by freeing up domestic resources for weapon production)
Schelling acknowledges that, in the short run, this way of thinking will not assist a country in building the military:
``in the middle of a battle almost nothing is a good substitute for ammunition''
``in the middle of a battle almost nothing is a good substitute for ammunition''
Mariya's dissertation seeks to unpack the components of "Security Externalities".
There are two components: (1) "importance of the export to national revenue", and (2) "Time of Conversion" (i.e. time it takes to convert a particular product to a gun)
There are two components: (1) "importance of the export to national revenue", and (2) "Time of Conversion" (i.e. time it takes to convert a particular product to a gun)
This graph illustrates the theoretical tradeoff between the two variables
Goods whose export revenue is unimportant to the national economy and that can immediately be used as a weapon of war will be prohibited right away
Goods whose export revenue is highly important to the national economy and that take a long time to be converted into a weapon of war are less likely to be prohibited
A key moderating variable is "expectations of war length". While she goes into more detail in the dissertation, this is essentially what is captured by the dotted arcs.
For instance, if you expect the war to be LONG, then those lines shift in (as more goods are likely to be convertible into weapons of war)
Pretty cool stuff! She evaluates this theory using data on British wartime export prohibitions during the Crimean War, World War I, and World War II.
I can show those in a later thread. Alternatively, if you are hiring, you can bring her in for a talk & see them right away! 😉
I can show those in a later thread. Alternatively, if you are hiring, you can bring her in for a talk & see them right away! 😉
In short, wartime is when you most would expect states to use sanctions, but that's not always the case!
This has big implications for not only how we think about sanctions, but also how we think about trade as a driver (or not) of peace!
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This has big implications for not only how we think about sanctions, but also how we think about trade as a driver (or not) of peace!
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