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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, led to global condemnation and sanctions. International companies were pressured to exit Russia. This policy brief examines which companies left, using data from the LeaveRussia project, and focuses on Swedish businesses that announced withdrawal but were still found in Russia. It also analyzes how these revelations affected their stock prices and investor reactions.

Is the Russian economy “surprisingly resilient” to sanctions and actions of the West? The short answer is no. In this policy brief, Maria Perrotta Berlin and Jesper Roine, researchers from Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), discusses the bleak economic future of Russia.

With sanctions becoming an increasingly important tool in ostracising autocratic regimes from western markets, the need for effective enforcement of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies is increasing. The global AML regime will be the backbone in detecting evasion of sanctions. This regime has, however, been widely criticised as ineffective. In this brief, Giancarlo Spagnolo and Theo Nyreröd discusses issues with the current AML regime and propose a reward scheme for whistleblowers to enable asset seizures. A powerful feature of their proposal is that it does not rely on the effectiveness of the AML regime.

Sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine are argued to be the strongest and farthest-reaching imposed on a major power after WWII, more numerous and more comprehensive than all other measures currently in force against all other sanctioned countries. A question often asked, which is hard to answer, is whether sanctions are effective.

What is the biggest problem with imposing sanctions on autocracies? How are the cost of sanctions shared across the sanctioned party? Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), talks about the "Fortress Russia" strategy and how the Russian economy's exposure to sanctions has changed since 2014.

In Ekonomisk Debatt, SITE researcher Anders OlofsgĂĄrd sheds light into what we can learn about the effectiveness of development aid from literatures at the macro, micro and meso- levels. What are we talking about when we talk about development aid?

Fragile states are particularly vulnerable to adverse economic shocks and in need of international support. Through constructive collaboration with international partners, however, fragile state governments can successfully pursue ambitious reform agendas for the short and long run. SITE and MISUM (Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets) invited the Minister of Finance of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Dr. Abdirahman Dualeh Beileh, and the Swedish ambassador to Somalia, Staffan Tillander, to discuss the role of international partnership in the recent development of economic reforms in Somalia.

Working paper: This paper aims to describe the corruption case and the connected cartels that affected one of the biggest Brazilian companies by analyzing how the cartel members acted and the contracts affected or potentially affected by the illegal activity.

This year’s SITE Energy Talks – Energy Demand Management: Insights from Behavioral Economics, was devoted to discussing how consumers make energy efficiency decisions and what incentives can be used to change consumer behaviour.

By Jenny Simon (with Justin Valasek)