Do sanctions lead to a decline in civil liberties?

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the effect of US-imposed sanctions on the civil liberties of the targeted countries for the 1972 –2014 period. To deal with the problem of selection and to control for the pre-sanction dynamics, we use a potential outcomes framework, which does not rely on the selection of matching variables and has the further advantage of uncovering the effect of the treatment on the outcome variable over t ime. What we find is that sanctions result in a decline in civil liberties, measured either by the Freedom House civil liberties index or by the Cingranelli and Richards empowerment rights index. The results are robust across various specifications.

Source: European Journal of Applied Physiology - April 1, 2019 Category: Physiology Source Type: research