Working Papers

"Targeted Sanctions." - New Draft!

Presented at LSE CEP International Workshop (2021), STEG Workshop - video (2021) , EBRD research seminar (2021), LSE STICERD workshop (2021), LSE Economic Geography workshop, Higher School of Economics, New Economic School, CEMFI, Bocconi Finance, St Gallen, HEC Lausanne, Political Economics of Conflict and Nation-Building conference, EEA-ESEM 2022, DENS conference, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano "Global Challenges International Workshop", CEBA seminar, University of Konstanz, NBER Megafirms and the Economy, ESSIM-CEPR conference, Baltic International Conference (invited session on Trade and Sanctions), CEPR-PSE Policy Forum, NBER SI, George Washington University seminar, DEM Workshop on the impact of global trade shocks (University of Luxembourg), Joint Conference by Kiel Institute and CEPR in Geoeconomics (Berlin).

This study examines the impact of 'smart' sanctions, a leading international policy, on Russian firms in 2014-2021. With a natural experiment involving staggered sanctions and data from over 2,000,000 firms, it investigates effects on both targeted entities and the aggregate economy. Contrary to expectations, sanctioned firms experienced a 28% increase in capital and 12% in revenue, attributed to a government compensation via subsidies, contracts, and loans. Nevertheless, these measures negatively affected the broader economy due to worsened misallocation leading to an up to 0.39% drop in TFP. Sanctions hurt the economy but helped the very firms they intended to target.

"Trade Sanctions" with Konstantin Egorov, Vasily Korovkin and Alexey Makarin 

How effective are trade sanctions? We examine the economic impact of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia following February 2022, when Western countries banned exports accounting for 36% of Russia's prewar import value. Combining novel, manually collected records of these sanctions with Russian customs data, firm balance sheets, domestic railway shipments, and government procurement contracts, we provide the most comprehensive analysis to date of the economic impact of trade sanctions on a target country. Using a difference-indifferences approach, we find that imports of sanctioned country-product varieties into Russia saw a sharp 62% decline following the war's onset. While we see substantial rerouting through third countries, it has not fully offset the direct import losses: total imports of sanctioned products fell by 27% through 2023. We find that Russian firms that had relied on soon-to-be-sanctioned imports experienced a 14% decline in output during the same period; we also observe similar declines for manufacturing and technology firms, and firms along the military supply chain. Affected firms have also experienced reduced government procurement sales and incurred additional losses when their buyers or suppliers were exposed to sanctions. Overall, our findings suggest that, contrary to widespread claims of ineffectiveness, import sanctions on Russia have had far-reaching adverse effects.

Publications

"Trade Sanctions Against Russia: Stylized Facts" with Konstantin Egorov, Vasily Korovkin and Alexey Makarin.

AEA Papers & Proceedings (2025)

Using a novel comprehensive dataset on sanctions imposed on the exports to Russia after 2022, we document four stylized facts. First, these sanctions covered 33 percent of Russia's pre-2022 imports in value. Second, though most of the sanctions were concentrated in a few high-tech product categories, at least as much import within these categories remained unsanctioned. Third, substantial variation exists in the specific sets of banned products across countries despite coordinating efforts. Fourth, most sanctioning countries have already prohibited most of their pre-2022 exports to Russia, limiting their future ability to impose additional trade sanctions.

"Planning ahead for better neighborhoods: long run evidence from Tanzania" with Guy Michaels, Ferdinand Rauch, Tanner Regan, Neeraj Baruah, and Amanda Dahlstrand. 

Journal of Political Economy (2021)

Africa’s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilitate long run neighborhood development? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during the 1970s and 1980s, and we use a spatial regression discontinuity design to compare greenfield areas that were treated (“de novo”) to nearby greenfield areas that were not. We find that by the 2010s, de novo areas developed into neighborhoods with larger and more regularly laid out buildings and better quality housing.

"Measuring urban economic density" with Vernon Henderson and Sebastian Kriticos. 

Journal of Urban Economics (2019)

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities. This paper estimates urban agglomeration effects, exploring simple and very nuanced measures of economic density to explain household income and wage differences across cities in six Sub-Saharan African countries. A key aspect of the work is that we define cities consistently across space based on fine scale density measures, in order to gauge the economic extent of the city. The evidence suggests that more nuanced measures of density, which attempt to capture within-city differences in the extent of clustering, do no better than a simple density measure in explaining income differences across cities. However, total population is a poor measure. We find large wage gains to being in denser cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, generally larger than such estimates for other parts of the world. We also find extraordinary household income gains to density that are far greater than wage ones. Such gains help explain the pull forces driving rapid urbanization in the region.

"Is high‐tech care in a middle‐income country worth it?" with Charles Becker.  

Economics of Transition (2016)

How much does a dramatic increase in technology improve healthcare quality in an upper middle‐income country? Using rich vital statistics on infant health outcomes, this study evaluates the effect of introducing technologically advanced perinatal hospitals in 24 regions of Russia on infant mortality during the period 2009–2013. A 7‐year aggregate panel dataset reveals that opening a perinatal centre corresponds to infant mortality reduction by 3.8 percent from the baseline rate, neonatal (0–28 day) mortality by 7 percent and early neonatal (0–6 day) mortality by 7.3 percent. We find that the perinatal centres help to save 263 additional infant lives annually, ranging from 3 to 25 lives in regions with different birth rates. However, we further find that an average cost per life saved is 52 million rb (or 2.6 million 2014 PPP USD), which is much higher than the cost of similar interventions in the United States.

Policy Reports

"Public Procurement Relationships in the Shadow of Trial: Evidence from Russia" with Gerhard Toews and Marta Troya-Martinez

"Trade, Trans-national Infrastructure Investments, and Economic Development: Evidence from the New Silk Road" with Cong Peng and Mazhar Waseem