Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. Are embargoes effective?
Cespic Working Paper 2020/05
Adelaide Baronchelli, Raul Caruso, Roberto Ricciuti
This paper analyses the trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) from 1990 to 2017. Our analysis relies on an unbalanced panel of 79,245 observations reporting SALW transfers between 9,275 pairs of countries. In particular, we study the impact of embargoes on trade in SALW. We test different channels through which arms embargoes may affect trade in SALW. We use a gravity model framework where we include beside traditional gravity variables also controls specific to trade in SALW. Results show that (i) embargoes reduce SALW imports of target country; (ii) there is no evidence of sanctions-busting because imports from neighbor countries do not seem to be positively affected; (iii) Imports of sport arms – which can be subject to fewer restrictions - appear to be unrelated to sanctions, indicating that the trade in this type of weapon may be still quite unrestricted.
