Without Evidence: Study Linking Sanctions Relief to Venezuelan Migration Questioned

Amid the U.S. policy shift toward a maximum pressure strategy against Venezuela, a new study led by economist Francisco Rodríguez, a professor at the University of Denver, alongside researchers Giancarlo Bravo and David Rosnick from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the Petróleo por Venezuela Foundation, refutes the findings of a recent paper by Dany Bahar and Ricardo Hausmann. The latter suggested that sanctions relief drove Venezuelan migration to the U.S.

Bahar and Hausmann, both known advocates of using sanctions as a tool for international pressure, argued in a working paper published by the Center for Global Development that higher oil revenues from sanctions relief explain the increase in encounters with Venezuelan migrants at the U.S. southern border.

A Study Based on Serious Methodological Errors

However, Rodríguez’s team demonstrated that this conclusion stemmed from a coding error: the original study used an unusual statistical transformation—a twelfth difference—instead of conventional year-over-year differences. When corrected, the alleged relationship disappears.

Additionally, the authors of the new study highlight that Bahar and Hausmann failed to account for U.S. labor market conditions, which improved significantly during the analyzed period and are strongly correlated with oil prices.

“What appeared to be a causal effect of Venezuelan oil revenues is actually a spurious correlation reflecting the influence of U.S. demand factors on migration flows,” Rodríguez stated. “Claiming that sanctions reduce migration based on this analysis is methodologically untenable: not only is there a coding error, but the most obvious factor behind the migration surge—the recovery of the U.S. labor market—is ignored.”

David Rosnick added: “Basing public policy decisions on flawed or empirically weak evidence can lead to deeply misguided conclusions. Sanctions aim to impact economies. It’s expected that they generate more poverty and migration. A flawed study doesn’t change that reality.”

Rodríguez and co-authors also warn of other fundamental weaknesses in Bahar and Hausmann’s analysis: it relies on a limited sample of 48 monthly observations of Venezuelan encounters at the U.S. southwest border, a dataset that inadequately captures the relationship between Venezuela’s internal economic conditions and migration, as many of these migrants left the country years earlier.

Millions of Venezuelans had left their country amid social and economic crisis. Source: Vatican News.

Updated Study Fails to Correct Erroneous Conclusions

On Friday, April 11, Bahar and Hausmann published a revised version of their working paper, acknowledging the coding error pointed out by Rodríguez, Bravo, and Rosnick.

However, they continue to assert that their conclusions hold. Yet the new results tell a different story: of the six econometric specifications presented in the corrected version, none are significant at the 5% level, not even those the authors deemed most reliable. In social sciences, this systematic lack of statistical significance is interpreted as a lack of evidence for a causal relationship.

“Beyond the statistical issues, the data used are inadequate: these are people crossing the border now, but who left Venezuela years ago. It’s the wrong dataset to measure the effect of sanctions,” Rodríguez noted.

“Sanctions policy has real impacts on millions of people. It must be based on solid evidence and rigorous analysis. Bahar and Hausmann’s original study didn’t meet that standard. Their revised version doesn’t either.”

The Importance of Rigorous Academic Standards

This episode also underscores the importance of the peer-review process in academic research. Bahar and Hausmann’s study was not subjected to external review before publication, allowing fundamental methodological errors to go unnoticed.

“The peer-review process isn’t infallible, but it’s designed to reduce the likelihood that research with substantial errors or unfounded conclusions influences public policy decisions,” Rodríguez said.

“This case demonstrates why it’s critical that analyses aiming to guide policies with profound human consequences undergo rigorous academic evaluation.”