Sanctions, sanctions-busting, and secondary sanctions: A game-theoretic analysis

Oana Secrier () and Ugurhan Berkok ()
Additional contact information
Oana Secrier: Royal Military College of Canada,Kingston,Ontario,Canada
Ugurhan Berkok: Royal Military College of Canada,Kingston,Ontario,Canada

Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 2025, vol. 20, issue 1, 42-54

Abstract: One of the reasons why economic sanctions fail to achieve their objective is sanctions-busting—where the target country engages in transactions with third parties to counter the effect of sanctions. Sanctions-busting has not been captured by existing theoretical models of sanctions. Developed here is a game-theoretic model of the sanctions-busting game between the third party and the target by accounting for the costs and benefits for all three players in the triad. A full range of equilibria consistent with actual sanctions episodes are obtained.

Keywords: Economic sanctions; sanctions-busting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.epsjournal.org.uk/index.php/EPSJ/article/view/417 (application/pdf)
Open access 24 months after original publication.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epc:journl:v:20:y:2025:i:1:p:42-54

DOI: 10.15355/epsj.20.1.42

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Peace and Security Journal is currently edited by Michael Brown and J Paul Dunne

More articles in Economics of Peace and Security Journal from EPS Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael Brown, Managing Editor, EPSJ ().