Measuring Trade-Disruption Exposure: A Sanctions-Based Index and Its Validation Against Trade

Zuhriddin Juraev () and Young-Jin Ahn ()
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Zuhriddin Juraev: Chonnam National University
Young-Jin Ahn: Chonnam National University

No 202618, Working Papers from Center for Global Policy Analysis, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University

Abstract: Economic sanctions are a routine instrument of statecraft, yet exposure to trade-restrictive measures is hard to compare across countries and over time. We build a continuous target-year index of trade-disruption exposure from the dyadic trade-sanction records of the Global Sanctions Data Base, Release 5, encoding the direction and stringency of each active restriction and the breadth of the sanctioning coalition, and a trade-weighted version scaling each restriction by the sender's pre-sanction trade share. In a structural gravity model the graded index recovers what a binary indicator hides. A complete ban is associated with a fall in bilateral trade of about two thirds, a partial ban about a tenth, and the binary flag averages them. The continuous index also predicts large reductions in aggregate trade where the binary indicator is only marginal. Applied to national income the association is not identified, which we present as a cautionary limit of aggregate inference.

Keywords: trade disruption; economic sanctions; measurement; structural gravity; weaponised interdependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2026-10
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