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In this article, the authors examine perceptions of the salience of the issue under dispute by both sender and target states and their impact on sanction outcomes. They find that both the sender's perception of the salience of the issue and the asymmetry in perception of issue salience between sender and target favoring sender states have significant and dramatic effects on sanctions outcomes. This finding suggests that how states perceive the issue(s) at dispute matters in determining the likelihood of sanctions success and adds to our understanding of what determines sanctions outcomes.

Corrupt arrangements are characterized by a high risk of opportunism. Moreover, denunciation and extortion add another layer of uncertainty for participants in corrupt transactions. This paper demonstrates how legislators can use an asymmetric design of criminal sanctions to amplify these inherent risks, thereby destabilizing corrupt arrangements. It is also shown that asymmetric penalties do not necessarily interfere with the goal of deterrence and that immunity may be a useful tool to disband the pact of silence characteristic of corrupt arrangements.

Rivals, not enemies -- The world order transition -- Putin and Trump -- European security -- The Middle East -- Asia and China -- Values and information -- Nuclear and cyber security -- Energy and sanctions -- Where to from the asymmetric rivalry?.

Foreign aid donors and recipient governments often have conflicting objectives. Foreign donors may attempt to influence the policies of recipient governments by offering aid or threatening to suspend aid to sovereign states. This paper considers the credibility of such inducements and the conditioning of aid flows on policy behavior by national governments in the presence of opposing objectives. Aid can be conditioned on past policy actions of the recipient and used to influence the distribution of government resources in a simple repeated agency model. In equilibrium, aid flows are backloaded and reward recipient governments for donor-preferred policy actions. The model is extended to a stochastic setting to allow for asymmetric information between donors and recipients regarding government resources and accumulation of private of foreign assets. This allows for unobserved capital flight implicitly financed by foreign aid inflows by constituents favored by the government. Conditional aid is still feasible and can be enforced by aid suspensions in the presence of potential capital flight.

Foreign aid donors and recipient governments often have conflicting objectives. Foreign donors may attempt to influence the policies of recipient governments by offering aid or threatening to suspend aid to sovereign states. This paper considers the credibility of such inducements and the conditioning of aid flows on policy behavior by national governments in the presence of opposing objectives. Aid can be conditioned on past policy actions of the recipient and used to influence the distribution of government resources in a simple repeated agency model. In equilibrium, aid flows are backloaded and reward recipient governments for donor-preferred policy actions. The model is extended to a stochastic setting to allow for asymmetric information between donors and recipients regarding government resources and accumulation of private of foreign assets. This allows for unobserved capital flight implicitly financed by foreign aid inflows by constituents favored by the government. Conditional aid is still feasible and can be enforced by aid suspensions in the presence of potential capital flight.

Corrupt arrangements are characterized by a high risk of opportunism: double-dealing, whistle-blowing and extortion are significant uncertainties for participants in corrupt transactions. This paper demonstrates how legislators may use an asymmetric design of (criminal) sanctions and leniency programs to amplify these inherent risks, thereby destabilizing corrupt arrangements. It is also shown that asymmetric penalties and (ex-ante) leniency do not necessarily interfere with the goal of deterrence and may be a useful tool to disband the 'pact of silence' characteristic of corrupt arrangements. In particular, we show that bribe-takers should less be penalized for taking and more for reciprocating a bribe. Likewise, bribe-givers should be punished for giving bribes, but not for accepting the bribetakers' reciprocity.

This paper provides a simply theory to explain the impact of sanctions on a regime's policies and behavior. Sanctions are generally put to strip the target country from its available rents and weaken the government's stance against growing discontent in the population. We show however that sanctions may give legitimacy to an incumbent government by influencing the optimal level of religious ideology provided by the state and further stabilizing its grip to power and rents. While in a good state of nature sanctions build resilience as long as religious ideology among the population is strong, at bad times they compel the target country to move towards ideological moderation. In a world of asymmetric information, the target country always finds it optimal to send an accurate signal in order to successfully convince the imposing side to lift sanctions and reach a win-win outcome.

This paper provides a simply theory to explain the impact of sanctions on a regime's policies and behavior. Sanctions are generally put to strip the target country from its available rents and weaken the government's stance against growing discontent in the population. We show however that sanctions may give legitimacy to an incumbent government by influencing the optimal level of religious ideology provided by the state and further stabilizing its grip to power and rents. While in a good state of nature sanctions build resilience as long as religious ideology among the population is strong, at bad times they compel the target country to move towards ideological moderation. In a world of asymmetric information, the target country always finds it optimal to send an accurate signal in order to successfully convince the imposing side to lift sanctions and reach a win-win outcome.

In major legal orders such as UK, the U.S., Germany, and France, bribers and recipients face equally severe criminal sanctions. In contrast, countries like China, Russia, and Japan treat the briber more mildly. Given these differences between symmetric and asymmetric punishment regimes for bribery, one may wonder which punishment strategy is more effective in curbing corruption. For this purpose, we designed and ran a lab experiment in Bonn (Germany) and Shanghai (China) with exactly the same design. The results show that, in both countries, with symmetric punishment recipients are less likely to grant the socially undesirable favor, while bribers are more likely to report to the authorities with asymmetric punishment. In addition, when punishment was asymmetric, corrupt offers were significantly more likely in Shanghai, but not in Bonn. Our results suggest a tradeoff between deterrence and law enforcement. In a forward-looking perspective, lawmakers must decide which aim carries more weight.

Corrupt arrangements are characterized by a high risk of opportunism. Moreover, denunciation and extortion add another layer of uncertainty for participants in corrupt transactions. This paper demonstrates how legislators can use an asymmetric design of criminal sanctions to amplify these inherent risks, thereby destabilizing corrupt arrangements. It is also shown that asymmetric penalties do not necessarily interfere with the goal of deterrence and that immunity may be a useful tool to disband the "pact of silence" characteristic of corrupt arrangements. -- Corruption ; Asymmetric Sanctions ; Destabilization ; Opportunism ; Denunciation ; Immunity

The article considers the impact of international sanctions on the landscape of the Russian banking sector as well as on the economic policy framework. The author concludes that the effect of sanctions on bank lending and funding markets has been asymmetric: in particular, the increase of deposit interest rates has been considerably more moderate, resulting from substantial weakening in the retail funding base since 2013 as well as from the support provided by the Bank of Russia. The key consequence is the strengthening of state banks, which could generate risks for the quality of economic growth.

The research on economic sanctions effectiveness has highlighted the importance of public opinion. Yet the effect of sanctions on public opinion has attracted relatively limited scholarly attention. The few recent studies on this question report mixed findings. In this essay, I investigate the role of uncertainty over intentions in influencing public support for policy change in the target state. The literature on crisis bargaining have identified asymmetric information as a key problem. Studies on sanctions also highlight how sanctioning states (i.e. senders) often have unclear goals. Yet we do not have any firm evidence about how such uncertainties would affect public opinion. How do uncertainties about the intentions of the sender affect public support for policy change in the sanctioned (i.e. target) country? I argue that individuals would be less supportive of policy-change when they suspect that the sender has "ulterior motives" or a "hidden agenda." I field a pre-registered online survey experiment in Turkey using the recent US sanctions to test this claim. The findings suggest that uncertainty has a negative impact on support for policy change, but only among certain subgroups. The main analysis is complemented by automated text analysis of respondents' answers to provide suggestive evidence about uncertainty's negative impact.