Did you miss the chance to attend the annual SITE 2022 Development Day conference? This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 6, 2022. The main focus of the conference was how to maintain and organize support for Ukraine in the short and long run, with the current situation in Belarus and the region and the ongoing energy crisis in Europe, also being addressed.

On December 14, 2022, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) invited Professor Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, for a seminar discussion about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, non-democratic regimes and degenerate autocracy. In case you missed the event, watch the recordings to learn more about the research paper.

On December 6, 2022, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) hosted the annual Development Day, this year focusing on how to maintain and organize support for Ukraine. See photos and highlights from the conference to learn more.

What is the biggest problem with imposing sanctions on autocracies? How are the cost of sanctions shared across the sanctioned party? Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), talks about the "Fortress Russia" strategy and how the Russian economy's exposure to sanctions has changed since 2014.

The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE Network) stands for peace, security and democracy and condemns Russia’s invasion of the independent and democratic nation of Ukraine and violation of international law.

Given the current situation, Swedish financial support to Russia has been put into question. This was recently discussed in the major Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in an article in which Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), was interviewed among others.

In a recently published op-ed in Dagens Industri (in Swedish), Torbjörn Becker shares his insights on Russia's real threat from the West, which is economic and not military.

In Ekonomisk Debatt, SITE researcher Anders Olofsgård sheds light into what we can learn about the effectiveness of development aid from literatures at the macro, micro and meso- levels. What are we talking about when we talk about development aid?

Policy brief: The Belarus economy was already struggling to generate growth before both the corona pandemic and the political protests following the August presidential election. The lack of growth was the result of an incomplete transition process to modernize the economy combined with a strong reliance on the Russian economy and its dependence on international commodity prices that have not paid off in recent years. With the added political turmoil and, so far, lack of a new political and economic strategy, the economic outlook for Belarus looks grim. Even if a full-blown crisis may be avoided by restrictive economic policies, stagnation will nevertheless be the most likely outcome without fundamental reforms.

Working paper: SITE researcher Giancarlo Spagnolo together with co-authors compare different indicators of the spread and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, developing a novel method to adjust daily COVID-19 deaths to match weekly excess mortality. Focusing on Sweden, the only country that has good data and did not impose a lockdown. What would have happened if Sweden did impose a lockdown back in 2020?