The effect of sanctions on EU-russia trade: The study for 2015 - 2019

Abstract

We analyze the influence of sanctions on bilateral trade flows between the European Union and the Russian Federation during 2015-2019. Despite trade sanctions and counter-sanctions being imposed against particular groups of commodities, their influence affected trade flows between Russia and the EU in all sectors. The proposed methodology of estimating the effect of sanctions on EU-Russia trade is based on the idea of calculating trade potentials and comparing them with actual values. The augmented gravity approach is used to construct an econometric model, while the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood method is applied to derive unbiased estimates. It is shown that during 2015-2019, due to EU sanctions Russia lost USD 41.3 billion in export revenues annually, comprising 2.5 percent of its GDP. Russian exports to Europe declined in all basic industries, but the petroleum industry took 91.2 percent of the total losses. European aggregate exports to Russia have not suffered from mutual sanctions: Although the European food industry lost USD 2.7 billion annually, these losses were compensated for by export growth in other industries. © 2022, Institute of Geography of the Slovak Academy of Science. All rights reserved.