Economic Sanctions: Embargo on Stage. Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract

Economic sanctions appear to be a common and recurring tool of internationalrelations. Indeed, sender country or more generally, the international community,resorts to economic sanctions in order to punish and attempt to change a targetcountry's objectionable policy behavior. However, economic sanctions implycosts, especially in terms of trade. This thesis provides an overview of theliterature on this topic, in describing the historical and institutional law frameworkof economic sanctions and in presenting models and empirical works. The firstpart describes the history, the institutional law framework related to economicsanctions and essential notions. The second part presents fundamental models and insights to explain the phenomenon of economic sanctions. Trade's theoreticalimpacts will be reviewed before discussing the implementation of sanctions, inboth domestic and single-rational actor methodologies. The final section willintroduce empirical studies on the impact of economic sanctions on trade.