Globalization under strain: sanctions, migration, and the rewiring of world trade

This dissertation examines three fundamental dimensions of globalization under strain: economic sanctions, migration, and trade fragmentation. The first paper quantifies the impact of EU sanctions on European exports towards the Russian Federation following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, employing Difference-in-Differences and Synthetic DiD methodologies. Results confirm a statistically significant contraction in EU exports to Russia, driven by the sanctions regime rather than by macroeconomic conditions alone. The second paper investigates the domestic determinants of African emigration toward the EU, isolating the origin component of migration flows through a decomposition approach. Findings show that internal pressures — demographic growth, labor market imbalances, and natural disasters — are the primary drivers, with policy implications for the effectiveness of destination-side migration barriers. The third paper extends the Amiti and Weinstein (2018) methodology to international trade, decomposing world export growth into exporter, importer, world trend, and trading bloc components. Results reveal a growing fragmentation of global trade along geopolitical lines, with bloc effects peaking during the US–China trade war and China playing a structurally dominant role within its blocs. Taken together, the three analyses show that globalization is not vanishing but reconfiguring: its channels are being reshaped by forces that are economic in form but political in essence.