IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/6935.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Violence and Drug Prohibition in Colombia

Author

Listed:
  • Medina, Carlos
  • Martínez, Hermes

Abstract

We assess the role of inequality, poverty and drug prohibition, in explaining homicide rates(HR) in Colombia using panel data at the municipality level between 1990 and 1998. We use maximum likelihood estimation to evaluate several specifications of spatial models. When we pool the data we find a significant relation between the HR and poverty which is reinforced when the inequality variables are included in the regression. We use rates of arrest related to drugs as proxy for drug prohibition enforcement, and find no evidence of any net effect in this exercise. We proceed to estimate the model for every year since 1991 to 1998, and find mixed results along the analyzed period, with statistically significant positive coefficients for some years, evidencing a positive net effect for those years of drug prohibition on violence. This result calls for caution in the implementation of global policies meant to improve specific countries’ welfare, such as drug prohibition policies. On the other hand, our proxy for income inequality is not related to violence, while its relationship with poverty is weakly positive.

Suggested Citation

  • Medina, Carlos & Martínez, Hermes, 2003. "Violence and Drug Prohibition in Colombia," MPRA Paper 6935, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:6935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/6935/1/MPRA_paper_6935.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo, 2013. "Bushes and Bullets: Illegal Cocaine Markets and Violence in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 11934, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    2. Ariaster B. Chimeli & Rodrigo R. Soares, 2017. "The Use of Violence in Illegal Markets: Evidence from Mahogany Trade in the Brazilian Amazon," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 30-57, October.
    3. Adriana Camacho & Alejandro Gaviria & Catherine Rodríguez, 2016. "Drug Consumption in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 15238, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    4. Adriana Camacho & Alejandro Gaviria & Catherine Rodríguez, 2010. "El consumo de droga en Colombia," Documentos CEDE 7607, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Drug Prohibition; Violence; Crime; Spatial Econometrics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:6935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.