Skip to main content
Search
Audio Interview

Sanctions: war and economic consequences

Published on November 29, 2022   24 min

Other Talks in the Playlist: Interviews with business leaders and scholars

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Interviewer: Today, 17th of May 2022, I'm interviewing Professor Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel, Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School, USA. A link to Professor Frankel's biography accompanies this interview. Professor Frankel is the author of a 16th of March 2022 article in Project Syndicate titled: 'These Russia sanctions are different'. Now, two months later, the invasion of Ukraine is not going well for Russia. Listeners should expect to have read the article before listening to this interview. Professor Frankel, thank you for spending the time for this interview. Recognizing that most prophecies do not survive their first encounter with the future, let me ask two short, but not simple questions: what in the medium and longer-term are the economic consequences of the sanctions? First to Russia and also for the world. Prof. Frankel: Well, I think that one thing that we can say is that the magnitude of the sanctions and their likely effects are substantially greater than one would have guessed ahead of time. This has to do, if I had to point to one element, is that they are more multilateral then sanctions have been in the past. It wasn't expected when President Biden in December warned President Putin that if they invaded Ukraine, that there'd be severe consequences. That wasn't taken that seriously partly because the sanctions against