Economic warfare: Insights from Mançur Olson — Mark Harrison

Economic warfare was widely used in WWII. When one country blockaded another’s supply of essential goods or bombed the industries producing them, why did the adversary’s economy fail to collapse? This column, part of the Vox debate on the economics of WWII, reviews Mançur Olson’s insights, which arose from the elementary economic concept of substitution. He concluded that there are no essential goods; there are only essential uses, which can generally be supplied in many ways.

Also a reason that economic sanctions are not working as expected?

VOX.EU
Economic warfare: Insights from Mançur Olson
Mark Harrison is Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Research Fellow of Warwick’s Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy and the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham

(ht Naked Capitalism)