Secret Agreements in Sanctioned Economies

Abstract

With the imposition of sanctions, Russian companies have faced an additional challenge: ensuring the purchase of goods whose imports are prohibited. For this purpose, various tools are used, among which are secret sub-sanction agreements. This paper studies secret sub-sanction agreements as an extension of negotiation theory. A model of secret sub-sanction agreements is proposed to highlight the strategies of market players and the level of opacity (secrecy) that will be achieved to enforce the contract. A modification of the principal-agent incentive contract model is also proposed that takes into account the risks of secondary sanctions against the agent. To verify the models and to study the problem under study in more detail, the cases of secret sub-sanction agreements and their outcomes are considered.