The effect of economic sanctions on ethnic violence of target states: A panel data analysis

- We analyze whether economic sanctions can reduce the ethnic violence of target states.
- The imposition of economic sanctions exacerbates the ethnic violence within the target states.
- We also find a robust U-shaped relationship between income and ethnic violence.

Economic sanctions have become a popular tool of statecraft in international politics. This paper makes an attempt to investigate the effect of economic sanctions on ethnic violence by using a sample of 46 target states over the period 1984-2008. Our results indicate that the imposition of economic sanctions has a deleterious influence on ethnic violence. Moreover, an interesting by-product finding of this paper is that we find a U-shaped relationship between income and ethnic violence, which shed new light on the income-ethnic violence nexus.