The idea isn't from economics. It's from the liberalism school of IR.

It's not wrong, either. It's just imperfect. Like any IR theory, it's only a partial explanation, and things beyond the theory's scope happen.

In fact, it's a fairly good theory. Autocrats want to survive. Which means they don't want to get sanctioned and cause a recession, because they fear protests.

Other factors can often overwhelm that -- again, the theory isn't perfect.