Con el ánimo de contribuir al diseño de mejores políticas públicas y de proveer elementos académicos a los debates públicos, la Escuela de Gobierno Alberto Lleras Camargo y el Centro de Estudios sobre Desarrollo Económico – CEDE - de la Facultad de Economía de la Universidad de los Andes, han decidido publicar periódicamente Notas de Política. El objetivo de las Notas de Política es presentar los resultados de nuestras investigaciones académicas en un lenguaje ágil y accesible a un amplio espectro de colombianos. Con ello, esperamos difundir el trabajo académico y estrechar los vínculos entre la comunidad universitaria, el sector público y el sector privado. 

We model the war on drugs in source countries as a conflict over scarce inputs of successive levels of the production and trafficking chain. We explicitly model the vertical structure of the drug trade as being composed of several stages, and study how different policies aimed at different stages affect the supply, prices and input markets. We use the model to study Plan Colombia, a large scale intervention in Colombia aimed at reducing the supply of cocaine by targeting illicit crops and illegal armed groups’ control of the routes used to transport drugs outside of the country - two of the main inputs of the production and trafficking chain. The model fits many of the patterns found in the data and sheds light on certain puzzling findings. For a reasonable set of parameters that match well the data on the war on drugs under Plan Colombia, our model predicts that the marginal cost to the U.S. of reducing the amount of cocaine transacted in retail markets by one kilogram is $1’631.900 if resources are allocated to eradication efforts; and $267.450 per kilogram if resources are allocated to interdiction efforts.

This paper proposes a new identification strategy to estimate the causal impact of illicit drug markets on violence using a panel of Colombian municipalities covering the period 1994-2008. Using a UNODC survey of Colombian rural households involved in coca cultivation, we estimate the determinants of land suitability for coca cultivation. With these results we create a suitability index that depends on the altitude, erosion, soil aptitude, and precipitation of a municipality. Our exogenous suitability index predicts the presence of coca crops cross sectionally and its expansion between 1994-2000. We show that following an increase in the demand for Colombian cocaine, coca cultivation increases disproportionately in municipalities with a high suitability index. This provides an exogenous source of variation in the extent of coca cultivation within municipalities that we use as an instrument to uncover the causal effect of illegal cocaine markets on violence. We find that a 10% increase in the value of coca cultivation in a municipality increases homicides by about 1.25%, forced displacement by about 3%, attacks by insurgent groups by about 2%, and incidents involving the explosion of land mines by about 1%. Our evidence is consistent with the view suggesting that prohibition creates rents for suppliers in illegal markets, and these rents cause violence as different armed groups fight each other, the government and the civil population for their control and extraction.

Our goal in this paper is twofold: First, evaluate the impact on crime of the restriction of late-night alcohol sales in Bogotá; and second, quantify the causal effect of problematic alcohol consumption on different crime categories.

En este trabajo estudiamos los efectos indirectos del mayor Programa de Transferencias Condicionadas (PTC) en Colombia, Familias en Acción, sobre los niveles de criminalidad en el área urbana de la ciudad de Bogotá. Para realizar este estudio combinamos las siguientes dos fuentes de información: el Sistema de Información de beneficiarios de Familias en Acción (SIFA) y los reportes administrativos de criminalidad de la Policía Nacional. En el estudio evaluamos dos posibles canales por los cuales Familias en Acción puede afectar los niveles de criminalidad. Por un lado, el efecto ingreso, para el cual explotamos la variación existente en las fechas de pago del programa. Nuestros resultados indican que a través de este efecto el programa reduce el crimen a la propiedad. Específicamente, encontramos que las transferencias del programa reducen la tasa de hurto a personas y de hurto a vehículos en 7.2% y 1.3%, respetivamente, en los días posteriores a las trasferencias de Familias en Acción. Por otro lado, estudiamos si las condicionalidades de asistencia escolar como requisito para obtener los subsidios que otorga el programa “incapacitan” (o impiden) que los adolescentes se vinculen a actividades delictivas. Para estimar dicho efecto hacemos uso de las fechas de vacaciones del sistema educativo y las fechas de los paros del principal sindicato de trabajadores del sector educación (FECODE). Nuestros resultados indican que el programa Familias en Acción no tiene efectos sobre la criminalidad a través del efecto incapacitación. Con esto, los resultados muestran que las transferencias que otorga el programa Familias en Acción disminuyen el crimen (efecto ingreso), pero el efecto a través de la incapacitación de los adolescentes de vincularse a actividades delictivas no parece operar.

The Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes (PNVCC) is a new police patrolling program introduced in the eight major cities of Colombia in 2010 by the National Police. The strategy divides the largest cities into small geographical areas (cuadrantes), assigns six policemen to each, establishes a new patrolling protocol involving more community contact, and holds officers accountable for crime in their assigned area. The plan warranted a comprehensive training program for over 9,000 police officers aimed at improving interpersonal skills and implementation of the new patrolling protocols. By staggering the training schedule between three randomly chosen cohorts of police stations, we generate experimental variation in the exposure to training and in the effective implementation of the new police protocols induced by the Plan Cuadrantes. Comparing the 4 months immediately after training with the same months from the previous year, we find a significant reduction in several types of crime attributable to the training program, ranging from around .13 of a standard deviation for homicides to .18 of a standard deviation for brawls. These impacts are driven by very large effects in high crime areas and very small -or zero- effects in low crime neighborhoods. Once we take into account the high spatial concentration of crime, the estimated effects account for an overall reduction in the number of homicides of about 22%. We suggest that the training program affected crime by increasing the patrol police’s sense of accountability to the population and also possibly through higher police motivation. Large efficiency gains in public service provision may be attainable with relatively inexpensive interventions that bring public servants closer to their clients.