The Effect of Natural Resource Shocks on Violence, Crime, and Drug Cartels Presence in Mexico
(2022) NEKP01 20221Department of Economics
- Abstract
- We examine the effect of natural resource shocks on violence by drug cartels at the municipality level in rural Mexico from 2003 to 2017. For this, we use an Instrumental Variable setup by instrumenting our main explanatory variable vegetation density with rainfall. Vegetation density is an indicator for natural resource shocks and reflects the “greenness" in a particular area which is considered as an indicator of land productivity. Our main finding is that negative shocks in vegetation density increase homicides. This negative
shock could imply crop failures resulting in bad economic outcomes for people in rural areas thereby pushing people to engage with violent drug cartels. Additionally, in order to confirm the main results we... (More) - We examine the effect of natural resource shocks on violence by drug cartels at the municipality level in rural Mexico from 2003 to 2017. For this, we use an Instrumental Variable setup by instrumenting our main explanatory variable vegetation density with rainfall. Vegetation density is an indicator for natural resource shocks and reflects the “greenness" in a particular area which is considered as an indicator of land productivity. Our main finding is that negative shocks in vegetation density increase homicides. This negative
shock could imply crop failures resulting in bad economic outcomes for people in rural areas thereby pushing people to engage with violent drug cartels. Additionally, in order to confirm the main results we explore possible effects that natural resource shocks have on drug cartel presence, seizure of illegal drugs and other drug-related criminal activities. These results further confirm the negative relationship between natural resource shocks and violence by drug cartels. Our findings highlight the dynamics in the operation of the drug cartels and are relevant for understanding the determinants of conflict in rural
Mexico. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9085020
- author
- Cavazos Hernandez, Miriam LU and Sivakumar, Balasurya
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- NEKP01 20221
- year
- 2022
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Natural Resources, Conflict, Mexico
- language
- English
- id
- 9085020
- date added to LUP
- 2022-10-10 11:20:13
- date last changed
- 2022-10-10 11:20:13
@misc{9085020,
abstract = {{We examine the effect of natural resource shocks on violence by drug cartels at the municipality level in rural Mexico from 2003 to 2017. For this, we use an Instrumental Variable setup by instrumenting our main explanatory variable vegetation density with rainfall. Vegetation density is an indicator for natural resource shocks and reflects the “greenness" in a particular area which is considered as an indicator of land productivity. Our main finding is that negative shocks in vegetation density increase homicides. This negative
shock could imply crop failures resulting in bad economic outcomes for people in rural areas thereby pushing people to engage with violent drug cartels. Additionally, in order to confirm the main results we explore possible effects that natural resource shocks have on drug cartel presence, seizure of illegal drugs and other drug-related criminal activities. These results further confirm the negative relationship between natural resource shocks and violence by drug cartels. Our findings highlight the dynamics in the operation of the drug cartels and are relevant for understanding the determinants of conflict in rural
Mexico.}},
author = {{Cavazos Hernandez, Miriam and Sivakumar, Balasurya}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Effect of Natural Resource Shocks on Violence, Crime, and Drug Cartels Presence in Mexico}},
year = {{2022}},
}