The impact of economic sanctions: scientific approaches and concepts

The purpose of the study is to explore the scientific theories describing economic sanctions and their impact, as well as relevance of their provisions. Events of 2022 have seriously influenced the understanding of restrictions as an instrument of foreign economic policy, which necessitates a revision of fundamental concepts, identification of existing “blind spots” and promising scientific inquiries directions. Through a step-by-step analysis and generalization of the contents of fundamental and applied works of the most cited foreign and Russian scientists who have contributed to the understanding of sanctions, the possible level of their impact on its object, as well as its specific factors and indicators, the following conclusions are drawn. The results of the conducted research are the identified features of the modern theoretical understanding of economic sanctions, as well as the formulated proposals for improving future scientific works in terms of the methodology used and the most relevant thematic areas. Most of the studies establish noneconomic and economic criteria as a determinant of economic sanctions. Methodology concerned, the majority of them are based either on the analysis of databases in which episodes of the application of restrictions are recorded, or on individual case studies. Right now, there is no consensus in the scientific community regarding the assessment of the effectiveness of restriction tools as such. All the new phenomena of sanctions policy, such as secondary and targeted sanctions, cannot fully be considered within the existing theoretical framework. In terms of coverage and consideration of potential influencing factors, the economic component of its understanding is currently inferior to its political science part. However, this drawback is rather temporary, since the scientific field in question continues to be in a stage of active development and comprehension of a significant number of applied works in 2022-2025 timeframe, which can become the basis for conducting new fundamental research based on their data. The study concludes that the influence of non-market administrative barriers on the economy of the object is undisputable. It is noted that the most promising studies today are those that focus on studying new manifestations of restrictive policy (secondary and targeted sanctions) and the impact of restrictions on individual sectors of the economy and their representatives. In this case, the methodological basis should consist of tools for assessing the state and dynamics of both macroeconomic indicators and intra- and inter-industry processes, which make it possible, among other things, to determine the impact of sanctions in the context of individual areas.