Random reference of the day: Ossa, Ralph. 2014. “Trade Wars and Trade Talks with Data.” American Economic Review 104 (12): 4104–46. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.12.4104.
International Relations: Trade Agreements, Sanctions, Tariff and Non-Tariff Measures.
Canadian Politics: Advocacy Coalitions, Federal Hubs, CAN-USA-MEX Transnational Policymaking.
Public Policy: Public-Private Trade Programs, Exports Diversification and Sustainability, Labour Reconversion.
Research Methods: Generalized Linear Models, Structural Gravity Model, General Equilibrium Estimation.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2025. “Kendallknight: An R Package for Efficient Implementation of Kendall's Correlation Coefficient Computation.” PLOS ONE 20 (6): e0326090. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326090.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio and Schneider Malamud, Jonathan. 2025. “cpp11armadillo: An R package to use the Armadillo C++ library.” SoftwareX 30 (May): 102087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2025.102087.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio and Barkai, Lital. 2025. “The REDATAM format and its challenges for data access and information creation in public policy.” Data & Policy 7 (January): e18. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dap.2025.4.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2020. “Economiccomplexity: Computational Methods for Economic Complexity.” Journal of Open Source Software 5 (46): 1866. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01866.
Cited by
Ondoš, Slavomír, Žofia Sinčáková, and Hudec Oto. 2024. “The Re-Emergence of Left-behind Regions: The End of Spatial Equity and the Rise of Dynamic Movements in Slovakia, 1990-2020.” Regional Statistics 14 (02): 258-82. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1239396.
Guerzoni, Marco, Massimiliano Nuccio, and Federico Tamagni. “Pre- entry knowledge base complexity and post-entry growth: evidence from Italian firms.” Industrial and Corporate Change 33, no. 1 (2024): 126-151. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtad037.
Vallim, Alberto, and Leonardo Monasterio. 2023. “Crescimento econômic regional e complexidade: o papel das microempresas e dos MEI.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos 17 (1): 131-54. https://doi.org/10.54766/rberu.v17i1.992.
Sankot, Ondřej, Tereza De Castro, Jana Vlčková, and Cristina Procházková Ilinitchi. 2023. “Mapping of Capabilities and Export Opportunities of Czechia.” Prague Economic Papers 32 (2): 159-83. https://doi.org/10.18267/j.pep.829.
Caldarola, Bernardo. 2022. “Drivers and impacts of structural change in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from households and firms.” PhD thesis. University of Sussex. https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/thesis/Drivers_and_impacts_of_structural_change_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa_evidence_from_households_and_firms/23494250?file=41202386.
Guerzoni, Marco, Massimiliano Nuccio, and Federico Tamagni. 2022. “Discovering Pre-Entry Knowledge Complexity with Patent Topic Modeling and the Post-Entry Growth of Italian Firms.” LEM Papers Series. Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/ssalemwps/2022_2f25.htm.
Ondoš, Slavomír, Žofia Sinčáková, and Oto Hudec. 2022. “Advancement and New Spatial Patterns of the Creative Sector in the Old Industrial Structure.” In The Creative Class Revisited, 241-67. World Scientific. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811267659_0009.
Plessis, Michael du, and Wouter Bam. 2022. “Iops: A Python Package for the Input-Output Product Space Methodology.” In 2022 IEEE 28th International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC) & 31st International Association For Management of Technology (IAMOT) Joint Conference, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICE/ITMC-IAMOT55089.2022.10033299.
Meier, M. 2020. “Green Growth in the Technology Space - Regional Diversification Pathways in Europe.” Master Thesis. Utrecht University. https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/38037.
Pérez-Hernández, Carla Carolina, Blanca Cecilia Salazar-Hernández, Jessica Mendoza-Moheno, Erika Cruz-Coria, and Martín Aubert Hernández-Calzada. 2021. “Mapping the Green Product-Space in Mexico: From Capabilities to Green Opportunities.” Sustainability 13 (2): 945. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020945.
Wölwer, Anna-Lena, Jan Pablo Burgard, Joshua Kunst, and Mauricio Vargas Sepúlveda. 2018. “Gravity: Estimation Methods for Gravity Models in R.” Journal of Open Source Software 3 (31): 1038. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01038.
Cited by
Delgado-Martínez, Edinson. 2024. “The Impact of the Pacific Alliance on Trade Creation and Trade Diversion in the COVID-19 Period: A Robust Econometric Analysis” Economies 12 (12): 334. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies12120334.
Lenormand, Maxime. 2023. “TDLM: An R package for a systematic comparison of trip distribution laws and models.” Journal of Open Source Software 8, no. 88: 5434. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05434.
Oshan, Taylor. “Spatial interaction modeling.” Handbook of spatial analysis in the social sciences (2022): 208. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-of-spatial-analysis-in-the-social-sciences-9781789903935.html.
Moravec, Petr. 2022. “Impacts of Brexit Referendum on European Banks: Evidence from Country-by-Country Reporting.” Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta sociálních věd. https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/174029.
Oshan, Taylor M. 2022. “Spatial Interaction Modeling.” OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/m3ah8.
Herman, Peter. 2021. “Gegravity: General Equilibrium Gravity Modeling in Python.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3832208.
Ha, Le. 2021. “Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Trade in Goods of OECD Countries.” VNU Journal of Economics and Business 1 (2). https://js.vnu.edu.vn/EAB/article/view/4574.
Porto, Massimiliano. 2020. “The Gravity Model of Trade.” In Using R for Trade Policy Analysis: R Codes for the UNCTAD and WTO Practical Guide, edited by Massimiliano Porto, 65-81. SpringerBriefs in Economics. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34529-7_4.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2024. “Replicating The Log of Gravity.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.09066.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2024. “Welding R and C++: A Tale of Two Programming Languages.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.00568.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2024. “Kendallknight: Efficient Implementation of Kendall's Correlation Coefficient Computation.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2408.09618.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio, and Jonathan Schneider Malamud. 2024. “cpp11armadillo: An R Package to Use the Armadillo C++ Library.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2408.11074.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2022. “Economic Effects of Chile FTAs and an Eventual CTPP Accession.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.14748.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2023. “NAFTA is the Worst Trade Deal in the History of Trade Deals, Maybe Ever.” University of Toronto, Toronto.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2021. “Gravity Modelling Into R: Strengthening Analytical Capacity of ESCAP Member States.” UN ESCAP and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Since the end of World War II, sanctions have increased in number, but their effectiveness has decreased (The Economist 2021), which raises the question whether policy makers implement sanctions to satisfy domestic coalitions or achieve other goals. The economic consequences of sanctions can be explored at the sectoral level, distinguishing categories such as agriculture, energy, manufacturing, mining, and services. The current political and economic order justifies the need to account for the interdependence between different sectors of a national economy in global trade (Sbragia 2010; Vargas Sepúlveda 2020).
I proposed the thesis project “Trade Sanctions and Rule-Making,” where I shall answer the question “Who wins and who loses with sanctions?” I will focus on trade sanctions between political allies and the variation of effects between industries. This will uncover general patterns about how these mechanisms work, and to explain why and when policymakers deviate from World Trade Organization practices that reduce global trade uncertainty. The project is relevant due to the spiking complexity of global sanctions (Morgan, Syropoulos, and Yotov 2022; Coates 2022; Ossa 2014) and the rise of protectionism (Walter 2021; Fajgelbaum et al. 2020).
I intend to explore how Generalized Linear Models, in particular the Structural Gravity Model (Burgard et al. 2018), can be used to computationally simulate the impact of political decisions, such as a sanction being implemented. The model shows how the resulting changes in one sector in one country causes a chain reaction with consequences in GDP and other measures of economic welfare for third party countries (Vargas Sepúlveda 2021; Larch et al. 2016).
I aim to corroborate and expand existing sanctions databases (Felbermayr et al. 2020) and commodities trade data (Borchert et al. 2021). I intend to produce accurate sectoral trade databases for most of or all UN countries. One core feature of my work will be correcting mismatches in the data between importers and exporters, and cover as many gaps as possible by using administrative data from the UN and state-of-the-art linear models for imputation.
A comprehensive depiction at the sectoral level will enable me to study specific sanctions' impact and explore how policy toolkits affect different actors, ideas, and institutions (Lasswell 1970), and to balance theory and information-gathering (Simeon 1976). My contribution will be to integrate our political and economic understanding of sanctions, by creating a methodology to estimate the impact of sanctions that policy makers could use to evaluate the effectiveness, success, and impact of their agendas.
Borchert, Ingo, Mario Larch, Serge Shikher, and Yoto V. Yotov. 2021. “The International Trade and Production Database for Estimation (ITPD-E).” International Economics (Paris) 166: 140-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inteco.2020.08.001.
Burgard, Jan Pablo, Joshua Kunst, Mauricio Vargas Sepúlveda, and Anna Lenna Woelwer. 2018. “Gravity: Estimation Methods for Gravity Models in R.” Journal of Open Source Software 3 (31): 1038. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01038.
Coates, Benjamin. 2022. “A Century of Sanctions.” Origins. https://origins.osu.edu/article/economic-sanctions-history-trump-global?language_content_entity=en.
Fajgelbaum, Pablo D., Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Patrick J. Kennedy, and Amit K. Khandelwal. 2020. “The Return to Protectionism.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135 (1): 1-55. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz036.
Felbermayr, Gabriel, Aleksandra Kirilakha, Constantinos Syropoulos, Erdal Yalcin, and Yoto V. Yotov. 2020. “The Global Sanctions Data Base.” European Economic Review 129: 103561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103561.
Larch, Mario, José-Antonio Monteiro, Roberta Piermartini, and Yoto V Yotov. 2016. An Advanced Guide to Trade Policy Analysis: The Structural Gravity Model. World Trade Organization Geneva. https://vi.unctad.org/tpa/web/vol2/vol2home.html.
Lasswell, Harold D. 1970. “The Emerging Conception of the Policy Sciences.” Policy Sciences 1 (1): 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00145189.
Morgan, T. Clifton, Constantinos Syropoulos, and Yoto Yotov. 2022. “Economic Sanctions: Evolution, Consequences, and Challenges.” School of Economics Working Paper Series, November. https://ideas.repec.org//p/ris/drxlwp/2022_012.html.
Ossa, Ralph. 2014. “Trade Wars and Trade Talks with Data.” American Economic Review 104 (12): 4104-46. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.12.4104.
Sbragia, Alberta. 2010. “The EU, the US, and Trade Policy: Competitive Interdependence in the Management of Globalization.” Journal of European Public Policy 17 (3): 368-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501761003662016.
Simeon, Richard. 1976. “Studying Public Policy.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 9 (4): 548-80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842390004470X.
The Economist. 2021. “Sanctions Are Now a Central Tool of Governments' Foreign Policy.” The Economist. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/04/22/sanctions-are-now-a-central-tool-of-governments-foreign-policy.
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio. 2020. Leontief: Input-Output Analysis. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leontief.
———. 2021. Solutions Manual for An Advanced Guide to Trade Policy Analysis in R. 2nd ed. UN ESCAP. https://r.tiid.org/R_structural_gravity/.
Walter, Stefanie. 2021. “The Backlash Against Globalization.” Annual Review of Political Science 24 (1): 421-42. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102405.