Geo-political conflicts, economic sanctions and international knowledge flows

TL;DR

This study investigates how geo-political conflicts, specifically EU-Russia tensions post-2014, negatively impact international scientific collaborations, with effects increasing over time and varying by sector.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive econometric analysis of how international knowledge flows are affected by geopolitical conflicts using extensive publication data.

Findings

EU sanctions reduce bilateral scientific co-publications by up to 70%

Russian counter-sanctions also significantly decrease collaboration rates

Effects of sanctions grow over time and vary across sectors

Abstract

We address the question how sensitive international knowledge flows respond to geo-political conflicts taking the politico-economic tensions between EU-Russia since the Ukraine crisis 2014 as case study. We base our econometric analysis on comprehensive data covering more than 500 million scientific publications and 8 million international co-publications between 1995 and 2018. Our findings indicate that the imposition of EU sanctions and Russian counter-sanctions from 2014 onwards has significant negative effects on bilateral international scientific co-publication rates between EU countries and Russia. Depending on the chosen control group and sectors considered, effect size ranges from 15% to 70%. Effects are also observed to grow over time.