What are the consequences of domestic violence? What are the factors behind domestic violence? How does war affect the prevalence of gender violence in conflict areas and post conflicts? On 11 May 2022, the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the FREE Network hosted a hybrid conference focused on 'Economic and social context of domestic violence' with a special panel session on ‘Dimensions of gender-based violence in military conflicts’.

Sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine are argued to be the strongest and farthest-reaching imposed on a major power after WWII, more numerous and more comprehensive than all other measures currently in force against all other sanctioned countries. A question often asked, which is hard to answer, is whether sanctions are effective.

Everybody is deeply shaken by the horror of war, but there are some gender differences in the type of harm that individuals face. Acknowledging the specific risk that women face during wartime in order to target interventions is important, especially considering that often the actors that sit at peace negotiation tables are exclusively men. Pamela Campa, Assistant Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), discusses the risks that women face during a war conflict.

"Carbon Taxes and CO2 Emissions: Sweden as a Case Study" written by Julius Andersson, Assistant Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), has won the 2022 AEJ: Economic Policy Best Paper Award.

The world is currently experiencing what can be labelled as a global energy crisis, with surging prices for oil, coal, and natural gas. For households in Sweden and abroad, this translates into higher gasoline and diesel prices at the pump as well as increased electricity and heating costs. In this policy brief, Julius Andersson, Assistant Professor at SITE, together with Celina Tippmann, Research Assistant at SITE, put the current gasoline price in Sweden into a historical context and answer two related questions: are Swedish households paying more today for gasoline than ever before? And should policymakers respond by reducing gasoline taxes?

This brief provides an overview of the discussion on the relative merits of grants and loans in the literature on foreign aid, including a short section on debt relief initiatives. These claims are then tested against the context of Ukrainian post-war reconstruction, and it is argued that the case for providing grants is very strong. This argument is based on the magnitude of the investments needed, the need to create a long-run sustainable economy, the road towards a future EU membership, and the global value of a democratic and prosperous Ukraine as a bulwark against autocratic forces.

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, the West has been contemplating sanctions on Russian oil and gas imports. For the EU, this plan poses a significant challenge due to the long-existing sizable dependency on Russian energy. In this brief, we outline the possible effects of banning Russian oil and gas on the energy import bill across the EU.

The world is darkened by Russia´s terrifying and tragic war against Ukraine. The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Embassy of Ukraine in Sweden hosted a fundraising event and discussion on how to provide intellectual and humanitarian support to faculty members, researchers, and students working within and outside Ukraine’s borders.

In recent decades, a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. What do we know about these "Spin Dictators"?

In a recently published op-ed, Torbjörn Becker, Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, discusses why Russia must be forced to pay a higher price for its war in Ukraine. Sanctions should be directed at oil and gas exports, and it is also time to increase the pressure on the banking system. Frozen Russian assets in the West could later become a good basis for Ukraine's reconstruction.