Economic Sanctions: Stylized Facts and Quantitative Evidence

The remarkable increase in the use of economic sanctions as a coercive tool of foreign policy over the past quarter century has been accompanied by an equally rapid growth in the number of academic and policy studies. We review recent work in this area. We start by highlighting stylized facts from the Global Sanctions Data Base, the most comprehensive macro source of information on sanction regimes. We then review the growing empirical literature on the effects of sanctions on economic outcomes, with a special focus on trade. Finally, based on the evidence, we discuss open conceptual questions and the direction of future work in the area of sanctions.