The impact of economic sanctions on the COVID-19 pandemic

It is important to examine how international economic sanctions affect public health responses and outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for effective global health strategies amidst geopolitical tensions. This research empirically examines how economic sanctions affect the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in target countries for the period February 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022. We use a difference-in-differences (DID) estimator and our sample includes 181 countries, 83 of which are subject to economic sanctions. We document evidence that economic sanctions have a significant negative impact on the spread of the epidemic in the targeted countries by increasing daily confirmed cases and deaths. These negative effects are also more pronounced (i) with a longer duration of sanctions and (ii) for Asian countries. Furthermore, we find that the negative effect of economic sanctions is weaker when government responses are more severe.