Tag Archives: Economic Growth

Santos, Morales and Partipilo Cornielles claim that the bulk of the decline in Venezuela’s income preceded the imposition of economic sanctions and that the rate at which the economy contracted did not accelerate after sanctions. Both claims are false. Even if they were true, they would support the authors’ conclusions only if one were toContinue reading “The Role of Sanctions in Venezuela’s Collapse: A Critical Comment on Santos et al. (2026)”

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.