Introduction & Frontier

Session 1 — the landscape, the concepts, and the enforcement frontier

90 min · Lecture

What we cover

Sanctions now cover roughly 12% of country pairs and 27% of world trade; the GSDB R4 records ~600 active programmes, up from ~200 a decade ago (Felbermayr et al. 2025; Yalcin et al. 2025).
Who sanctions whom: US-centred initiation, dispersed targets, and the shift in the instrument mix toward financial, asset and travel measures (Drezner 2024).
Conceptual frames: Hirschman’s asymmetric interdependence, Farrell–Newman’s weaponized interdependence, Drezner’s coercion/denial/signalling logic, and the convexity-in-coalition-share argument (Hirschman 1945; Farrell and Newman 2019; Hausmann et al. 2024).
Effects on target, sender and third countries, with Russia 2014/2022 as the running case (Chowdhry et al. 2024; Crozet and Hinz 2020).
The enforcement frontier: military-goods evasion, the Eurasian entrepôt, the oil price cap and dark fleet, SWIFT/TARGET2 plumbing, chip controls, private sanctions (Scheckenhofer et al. 2025; Chupilkin et al. 2026; Johnson et al. 2023).

References

Chowdhry, Sonali, Julian Hinz, Katrin Kamin, and Joschka Wanner. 2024. “Brothers in Arms: The Value of Coalitions in Sanctions Regimes.” Economic Policy 39 (118): 471–512. https://doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiae019.

Chupilkin, Maxim, Beata Javorcik, and Alexander Plekhanov. 2026. “The Eurasian Roundabout: Trade Flows into Russia Through the Caucasus and Central Asia.” European Economic Review 187: 105340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2026.105340.

Crozet, Matthieu, and Julian Hinz. 2020. “Friendly Fire: The Trade Impact of the Russia Sanctions and Counter-Sanctions.” Economic Policy 35 (101): 97–146. https://doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiaa006.

Drezner, Daniel W. 2024. “Global Economic Sanctions.” Annual Review of Political Science 27: 9–24. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041322-032240.

Farrell, Henry, and Abraham L. Newman. 2019. “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion.” International Security 44 (1): 42–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351.

Felbermayr, Gabriel, T. Clifton Morgan, Constantinos Syropoulos, and Yoto V. Yotov. 2025. “Economic Sanctions: Stylized Facts and Quantitative Evidence.” Annual Review of Economics 17: 175–95. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-081623-020909.

Hausmann, Ricardo, Ulrich Schetter, and Muhammed A. Yildirim. 2024. “On the Design of Effective Sanctions: The Case of Bans on Exports to Russia.” Economic Policy 39 (117): 109–53. https://doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiad043.

Hirschman, Albert O. 1945. National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade. University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/national-power-and-the-structure-of-foreign-trade/paper.

Johnson, Simon, Lukasz Rachel, and Catherine Wolfram. 2023. “Design and Implementation of the Price Cap on Russian Oil Exports.” Journal of Comparative Economics 51 (4): 1244–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2023.06.001.

Scheckenhofer, Lisa, Feodora A. Teti, and Joschka Wanner. 2025. Dodging Trade Sanctions? Evidence from Military Goods. Working Paper 11743. CESifo. https://www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/publications/2025/working-paper/dodging-trade-sanctions-evidence-military-goods.

Yalcin, Erdal, Gabriel Felbermayr, Mohsen Kariem, et al. 2025. “The Global Sanctions Data Base, Release 4: The Heterogeneous Effects of the Sanctions on Russia.” The World Economy 48 (9): 2003–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.13732.