Russian Roulette at the Trade Table
研究了2014年俄罗斯对欧盟农产品进口禁令的短期经济影响，发现俄罗斯自身损失最大（约34亿欧元），而欧盟通过转向其他市场部分弥补了损失。
In the summer of 2014 Russia imposed a ban on most agri-food products from countries enforcing Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. We use a specific factors computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the short-run impact of this retaliatory policy. The baseline is carefully designed to isolate the impacts of the ban on the European Union (EU), Russia itself and a selection of key trade partners. The modelling of the ban follows a novel approach, where it is treated as a loss of established trade preferences via reductions in consumer utility in the Armington import function. Not surprisingly, the results indicate that Russia bears the highest income loss (about €3.4 billion) while the EU recovers part of its lost trade through expansion of exports to other markets. An ex-post comparison between simulation results and observed trade data reveals the model predictions to be broadly accurate, thereby validating the robustness of the modelling approach.