ERF 26th Annual Conference
Shooting Down Trade: The Impact of Russian Sanctions on Turkish Exports and Exporters
No.
ERF26_8
Publisher
ERF
Date
June, 2020
Topic
F5. International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
F1. Trade
On 24 November 2015, Turkish military shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian-Turkey border as it violated Turkish airspace for about 16 seconds. Russia retaliated by imposing an embargo on 17 agricultural HS-6 level products from Turkey. This paper evaluates the impact of these sanctions on Turkish exports and firms. Using restrictive customs and firm-level data, we estimate the effect of these sanctions on the exports towards Russia, for embargoed and nonembargoed products. We estimate a total trade loss of USD 5.8bn for Turkish exports, 84% of which stemming from non-embargoed products. Moreover, the adverse effects of sanctions persisted for some products even after these sanctions were lifted. Our firm-level analysis shows that firms trading with Russia directed part of their exports to other foreign markets and to the Turkish domestic market.
Authors
Cem Özgüzel
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne