What strategies work best for enforcing sanctions? Sanctions enforcement agencies like the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) face resource limitations and political constraints in punishing domestic firms for violating sanctions. Beyond monetary fines, sanctions enforcement actions also serve a “naming and shaming” function that tarnishes violators’ reputations. Larger, higher-profile companies tend have much more at stake in terms of their reputations than smaller or less well-known firms. At the same time, punishing higher-profile companies for sanctions violations is likely to generate more publicity about the risks and potential consequences of not complying with sanctions. We theorize that OFAC should impose larger fines on high-profile companies to draw attention to those cases, make the enforcement actions more memorable, and enhance the reputational costs that they inflict. We conduct a statistical analysis of OFAC enforcement actions from 2010 to 2021 and find support for our theory.

中文翻译：

---

通过损害企业声誉来实施经济制裁

哪些策略最适合执行制裁？美国外国资产控制办公室 (OFAC) 等制裁执行机构在惩罚违反制裁的国内企业时面临着资源限制和政治限制。除了罚款之外，制裁执法行动还起到“点名羞辱”的作用，玷污违法者的声誉。规模较大、知名度较高的公司往往比规模较小或知名度较低的公司在声誉方面面临更大的风险。与此同时，对违反制裁行为的知名度较高的公司进行惩罚可能会引发更多关于不遵守制裁的风险和潜在后果的宣传。我们认为 OFAC 应该对知名公司处以更大的罚款，以引起人们对这些案件的关注，使执法行动更令人难忘，并增加他们造成的声誉成本。我们对 2010 年至 2021 年 OFAC 执法行动进行了统计分析，并为我们的理论找到了支持。