Title: GOVERNMENT-IMPOSED RESTRICTIONS ON INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS (GRIER) 

Abstract: This paper introduces the “Government-imposed Restrictions on International Economic Relations” (GRIER) dataset. Existing data projects have been instrumental in identifying major sanctions cases or episodes. However, legacy data are limited in their ability to account for substantive heterogeneity and temporal evolution of specific economic restrictions imposed, which has limited scholars’ ability to capture the increasingly complex nature of sanctions over time. Using each restriction (i.e., the specific banned interaction across international borders) as the unit of analysis, the GRIER dataset codes all government-mandated restrictions by the EU, the UN, and the US for the years spanning 1992 to 2024. With a discussion of coding procedures and illustrations of summary statistics, we demonstrate that the GRIER dataset will help researchers test novel theories on the use, effectiveness, and consequences of sanctions on all sanctioned entities (e.g., states, individuals, and firms). 

Speakers:

Dr. Kee Hyun Park is an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Before joining NTU, I was a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. His research spans several areas within International Political Economy, including the political economy of trade, U.S. foreign economic policymaking, firms' political behavior in global value chains, and economic sanctions. He holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland and B.A. and M.A. degrees in International Relations from Seoul National University.

Dr. Dursun Peksen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis. He has published numerous articles on economic sanctions, armed interventions, human rights, political violence, and democratization. He was the 2025 recipient of the FPA Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association (ISA)! He is co-PI an NSF-supported project to collect restriction-level data on sanctions and export controls. Dr. Peksen received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. 

Dr. Timothy Petersen is Professor of Political Science in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. His research applies a scientific approach to the study of foreign policy, armed conflict, democracy, and human rights. He is co-PI an NSF-supported project to collect restriction-level data on sanctions and export controls. Dr. Petersen received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. 

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