Abstract

Santos, Morales-Arilla, and Partipilo Cornielles (2026) claim that the bulk of the decline in Venezuela’s income preceded the imposition of economic sanctions and that the rate at which the economy contracted did not accelerate after sanctions. Both claims are false. Even if they were true, they would support the authors’ conclusions only if one were to disregard the effect of oil prices on the Venezuelan economy.

Santos, Morales-Arilla, and Partipilo Cornielles (2026) claim that economic sanctions are not a major contributor to Venezuela’s collapse. They base their argument on two factual and two analytical claims. The factual claims are that: (i) most of the country’s drop in income preceded sanctions, and (ii) the rate of economic contraction did not accelerate after the imposition of sanctions. The analytical claims are that: (iii) the post-sanctions share of the drop in income provides an upper bound on the economic effects of sanctions, and (iv) the lack of acceleration of the rate of output decline provides evidence against the effect of sanctions.

None of these claims withstand scrutiny. The factual claims are wrong and appear to derive from calculation or interpretational errors. The analytical claims are incorrect in that even if the mistaken factual claims on which they rely were true, they would not lend support to the authors’ conclusions without imposing additional assumptions that, in the Venezuelan case, are simply untenable.

We now discuss each of their claims in detail.

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