New research shows how countries acting together when imposing sanctions can increase the effectiveness of the measures in terms of raising the economic costs for the target countries and increasing the potential for deterrence. The study by Sonali Chowdhry, Julian Hinz, Katrin Kamin and Joschka Wanner, which examines the role of coalitions in the context […]

While agricultural trade liberalisation raises economic activity, it also triggers distributional conflict and increases political violence in emerging countries, according to new research by Francesco Amodio, Leonardo Baccini, Giorgio Chiovelli and Michele Di Maio. But political violence does not increase everywhere: the effects are larger in urban areas, in areas where production requires relatively few […]

While the costs to the European Union (EU) as a whole of a variety of trade sanctions on Russia are small, there are big asymmetries. In particular, small European countries that were satellite economies of the Soviet Union suffer enormously more than large West European economies, sometimes by several orders of magnitude. That is the […]

Agreements made between former enemies in civil conflicts to share political power in the same government can have a significant impact in reducing the likelihood and intensity of violence. That is the central finding of new research by Hannes Mueller and Christopher Rauh. Comprehensive power-sharing agreements – which cover substantive issues made between parties that […]