Research Projects

Working Papers

Chains of Security? Sanctions, Economic Linkage, and Firm-level Cooperation (solo-authored)

Why do some firms in non-sanctioning countries cooperate with sanctions, while other firms do not? This paper argues that firm-to-firm economic linkages with sanctioning countries function as a channel for eliciting cooperation from firms based in non-sanctioning countries. When these firms have economic linkages - through ownership and/or trade - with sanctioning countries' firms, they are more likely to cooperate with sanctions due to higher costs of trading export-controlled items. Foreign governments and economic partners can leverage these linkages to pressure firms to cooperate with sanctions, even if these firms are based in non-sanctioning countries. Some firms, however, maintain their risky business despite pressures and evade sanctions by adjusting their commercial contracts. In particular, this paper will show how firms attempt to mitigate risks by altering currency usage and shipping contracts. The empirical analysis focuses on the sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which represents the largest sanctions campaign to date in terms of imposed sanctions' economic scale. Utilizing 47 million firm-product level shipment datasets from Russia and its trading partners, the empirical analysis will explore the impact of sanctions on firm-level cooperation with sanctions. These findings will provide insights about the effectiveness of sanctions as well as firm-level risk calculations in international commerce.

Targeted Sanctions and Maritime Shipping: Evidence from Satellite Tracking of Vessels 

(with Christina Davis, Partnership with UN Global Platform)

The growing reliance on economic sanctions highlights the need to better understand their impact. This paper examines a prominent tool within the sanctions regime: restrictions targeting specific shipping vessels. The narrow focus and high visibility of the actor renders shipping a strong case for effective sanctions, but even here, sanction-busting behavior undermines the impact. Focusing on U.S. sanctions against maritime vessels, we show that sanctions yield only limited effects when third-party states continue to engage with targeted ships. Drawing on satellite-based tracking data from 2013 to 2022, we estimate the impact of targeted sanctions with granular ship-level analysis. Our results indicate that sanctions cause only a temporary decline in sanctioned vessels’ port calls. These short-lived effects are offset as sanctioned ships increasingly adopt dark fleet activities—evasive practices such as disabling tracking systems—that weaken both sanction enforcement and global maritime governance. We further examine which countries receive port calls from sanctioned vessels to identify the drivers of sanction-busting behavior. Country-level analysis reveals that states politically aligned with the sanctioned targets receive significantly more port calls from sanctioned vessels, even when they are highly dependent on trade with the United States. These findings underscore the challenges for even narrowly targeted sanctions policies. So long as a target has friends in the international system, it can evade sanctions.

Competitive Cooperation? Rivalry and Public Support of International Organizations (with Hyunso Oh)

Could public support for international organizations (IOs) survive amid geopolitical rivalry? Contrary to popular expectation that a rival's participation could lead to backlash against IOs, we argue that rivalry can strengthen the domestic backing of costly support for IOs. We test this claim using paired survey experiments in the two biggest players in the multilateral stage--United States and China--focusing on the cases of United Nations and the Paris Agreement. In line with our theory of competitive cooperation, we find that both U.S. and Chinese citizens are more likely to support increased funding to the IOs when informed about a rival country's boost in funding. For Americans, the support operates through competitive perceptions of national influence within IOs, whereas the mechanism is less salient among the Chinese respondents. Against received wisdom, we find evidence that Americans with high levels of national chauvinism and support for the Republican Party are also, if not more, likely to lend support for increased IO funding. We further show that such increased support is not accompanied by a broader call for unilateralism or other exclusionary arrangements. Our findings reveal the geopolitical logic that underpins public support for even costly contributions to IOs.

Persuasion and Backlash from International Law in Global Swing States (with Stephen Chaudoin)

When one country or international organization makes accusations about violations of in- ternational law, the intended audience is often third-party states who might support punishing the offender. When do these accusations persuade publics in those countries and when do they trigger backlash? We show that reactions to accusations about international law violations are consistent with a theoretical model that allows for both types of responses – persuasion and backlash – depending on the audience member’s prior beliefs and trust in the information source. We provide evidence from large survey experiments in four global swing states: India, South Africa, Turkey, and Indonesia. Swing states are where persuasion or backlash matter most, since alle- gations about international law could conceivably tilt their support toward the accuser or the accused. In our survey experiments, when the International Criminal Court makes accusations that Russia violated international law, this persuades certain subsets of the population to support sanctions and assistance for Ukraine. When the United States makes an identical accusation, this fails to persuade, and often backfires, because of the United States’ lack of credibility as an accuser. We further show how accusations affect perceptions of the accuser, not just the accused. We show a dynamic feedback loop, where information sent today can increase or decrease views of the cred- ibility of the information source. This can then magnify or mute the effect of future accusations. Accusations by the ICC improve respondents’ views of the Court’s credibility. Accusations by the United States further undermine its credibility.

Work in Progress

Optimizing Export Controls on Chips (with Yunho Jin)

We explore the challenge of designing optimal export controls for AI training hardware, particularly GPUs, to balance U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. GPUs are pivotal for AI development, with implications for both industrial innovation and military capabilities. Our framework focuses on restricting access to advanced GPUs by geopolitical rivals, such as China, while minimizing the economic impact on U.S. firms. We propose frameworks to evaluate export controls, incorporating key GPU performance metrics—compute capability, memory bandwidth, and interconnect bandwidth—and their role in AI development. A performance modeling tool will assess the time, energy, and carbon footprint required for AI training, providing insights into the optimal boundaries for export controls. By addressing the tension between industry advocacy for narrowly tailored policies and government priorities for national security, we aim to offer actionable recommendations to policymakers. This work bridges technical and policy considerations to create a balanced approach to export controls.

Demystifying Kim's Kingdom: Public, Elites, and Propaganda in North Korea Newspapers (with Nayun Kim)

This project investigates North Korea's elite-level authoritarian information control with a comparison to public-level information control through large textual datasets including official newspapers and party propaganda. This dataset is the first attempt to systematically analyze North Korea's domestic politics from the 1940s to the present. 

Targeted sanctions and the behavior of drug trafficking organizations (with Julio S. Solís Arce)

This paper analyzes how US sanctions affect the behavior of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in Mexico. DTOs strategically choose to use violence to hold influence in their operating regions. When facing economic sanctions, we expect DTOs to exert violence to citizens to cope with unexpected negative income shocks.

Publication

Lim, T. (2023). Fragmented Labor Regime: FDI, Labor Regulation, and Workers’ Protests in China. Journal of East Asian Studies

Lim, T., & Kim, S. E. (2022). Buying influence? Rotating leadership in ASEAN and allocation of Chinese foreign aid. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific.

Other Publications

(Book Chapter) "Political Foundation of Educational Policy: the Generational Effects on Public Education Spending in South Korea" (with Dong-Hun Kim and Chanwoong Yoon, in Korean), in Market and Democracy in the Era of Inequality

Political Foundation of Educational Policy: the Generational Effects on Public Education Spending in South Korea. Korean Journal of Political Science. 28(2) (with Dong-Hun Kim and Chanwoong Yoon, in Korean)