How much have sanctions, and other politically induced restrictions on economic activity, affected the Venezuelan economy? How much of the country’s decline can be attributed to these causes, as opposed to the more standard causes of poor policies and external shocks? In this paper I offer a quantification of the effect of alternative causes. The bottom line is that around half of the country’s economic contraction between 2012 and 2020 can be explained as a result of sanctions and other politically induced restrictions such as the withdrawal of government recognition.
Category Archives: Working Papers
Sanctions and Imports of Essential Goods: A Closer Look at the Equipo Anova (2021) Results
We revisit the results of Equipo Anova (2021), who claim to find evidence of an improvement in Venezuelan imports of food and medicines associated with the adoption of U.S. financial sanctions towards Venezuela in 2017. We show that their results are consequence of data coding errors and questionable methodological choices, including the use an unreasonableContinue reading “Sanctions and Imports of Essential Goods: A Closer Look at the Equipo Anova (2021) Results”
Political Growth Collapses
We argue that economic collapses can result from the adoption by political actors of strategies that generate severe negative economic externalities for society. We establish the conditions for political conflict to become economically destructive and develop a diagnostics toolkit to identifywhen income declines are consequence of the breakdown of conflict-management arrangements.When political conflict drives aContinue reading “Political Growth Collapses”
The economic determinants of Venezuela’s hunger crisis
This paper argues that Venezuela’s hunger crisis was caused by the collapse of the country’s import capacity. I show evidence supporting the hypothesis that the key driver of the decrease in caloric intake was the decline of more than nine-tenths in oil revenues, which sparked an economic contraction and forced the economy to undertake massiveContinue reading “The economic determinants of Venezuela’s hunger crisis”
Sanctioning Venezuela
This paper presents a summary of the evidence on the economic effects of financial and oil sanctions on Venezuela between 2017 and 2020. This paper is a chapter of my upcoming book, Scorched Earth: The Political Economy of Venezuela’s Collapse, 2012-2020.
Sanciones y producción petrolera: evidencia de la Faja Petrolífera del Orinoco
En esta investigación usamos una nueva base de datos de producción mensual en 33 bloques de la Faja Petrolífera del Orinoco para estimar el efecto de las sanciones financieras y petroleras sobre la industria petrolera venezolana. Hallamos efectos económica y estadísticamente significativos que indican que en ausencia de sanciones, la producción de la Faja sería entre tres y cinco veces su nivel actual.
Sanctions and Oil Production: Evidence from Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin
We use the differential access to credit of oil firms in Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin to identify the economic effects of financial and oil sanctions on firm output. Using a panel of monthly firm-level oil production from 2008-2020, we provide estimates showing that financial and oil sanctions led to large losses in oil production among firms which had access to international credit prior to sanctions. The estimated effects explain around half of the output drop experienced in those firms since the adoption of sanctions, and argue that in the absence of sanctions, production in the Basin would be between three to five times its current level.
Francisco R. Rodríguez 