The Impact of Economic Sanctions on South African Exports

In the mid‐1980s many nations imposed sanctions on South African exports, most of which were subsequently removed during 1991–3. I estimate the effect of eight industrialized economies’ sanctions on their imports from South Africa. Outliers are found to strongly influence the parameter estimates. Failure to take account of them leads to the conclusion that sanctions by the (then) European Communities most adversely affected South African exports. In fact, robustness checks reveal that the United States’ Comprehensive Anti‐Apartheid Act played the largest role, reducing bilateral imports by a third. The broader implications of these findings for estimating gravity equations are discussed.