Is the Russian economy “surprisingly resilient” to sanctions and actions of the West? The short answer is no. In this policy brief, Maria Perrotta Berlin and Jesper Roine, researchers from Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), discusses the bleak economic future of Russia.

With sanctions becoming an increasingly important tool in ostracising autocratic regimes from western markets, the need for effective enforcement of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies is increasing. The global AML regime will be the backbone in detecting evasion of sanctions. This regime has, however, been widely criticised as ineffective. In this brief, Giancarlo Spagnolo and Theo Nyreröd discusses issues with the current AML regime and propose a reward scheme for whistleblowers to enable asset seizures. A powerful feature of their proposal is that it does not rely on the effectiveness of the AML regime.

Russia’s war on Ukraine entails lost human capital, both in actual lives lost and due to major disruptions to key functions of the society, such as education and research. In light of this, the FREE Network, together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), hosted the public conference “Higher Education and Research in War and Peace“ in Warsaw on the 10th of September 2022. This policy brief is based on the presentations and panel discussions held during the conference.

Ukraine is currently receiving substantial inflows of foreign aid from western donors to help the country withstand the Russian aggression. The foreign aid flows partly reflect altruistic motives from the donor side, but also donor’s domestic strategic foreign policy objectives as the war is seen as part of a battle over the future world order. In this brief, Anders Olofsgård, discuss the academic literature that has analysed the existence and consequences of strategic motivations behind aid flows more generally, and draw some preliminary insights for the case of Ukraine.

Against the background of fast rising gasoline and diesel prices in 2022, a number of European countries have reduced fuel tax rates, often in the form of temporary “gas tax holidays”. In this policy brief, SITE researchers Julius Andersson and Celina Tippmann, analyse the tax incidence by comparing the gasoline price development in Sweden to that in Denmark, where the fuel tax rate remained unchanged.

The concern of Russian gas supply disruption and its implications has never been as serious. Chloé Le Coq, Professor at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (CRED) and a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), discusses how nudging energy consumers to lower their demand may support the plans of the European Commission (EC).

This brief summarizes the research papers presented at the 2022 FROGEE conference “Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence”, which took place on May 11, 2022. It was organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the FREE Network.

How much a country is talked about in the media can determine its place in the public debate. In this brief, SITE researchers Maiting Zhuang and Svante Strömberg study the amount of news coverage devoted to European countries in the Swedish press. They document a systematic difference between Western and Eastern Europe and explore underlying factors that could be important in explaining this East-West divide.

In recent years, there have been several high-profile leaks of documents related to the offshore financial industry, such as the Pandora Papers released last year. Some of the data contained in the leaked documents have now been made public. In this brief, SITE researchers Jonathan Lehne and Maiting Zhuang discuss the advantages and pitfalls of using these data for economic analysis. They show that despite some caveats, there are patterns in these data that can shed light on a secretive industry.

The recent record-high gas prices have triggered legitimate concerns regarding the EU’s energy security, especially with dependence on natural gas from Russia. This brief discusses the historical and current risks associated with Russian gas imports. SITE researchers Chloé Le Coq and Elena Paltseva argue that decreasing the reliance on Russian gas may not be feasible in the short-to-mid-run, especially with the EU’s goals of green transition and the electrification of the economy. To ensure the security of natural gas supply from Russia, the EU has to adopt the (long-proclaimed) coordinated energy policy strategy.