Crime and Growth Convergence : Evidence from Mexico

Enamorado, Ted ; Ló ; pez-Calva, Luis F. ; Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ARMED FORCES;    ASSASSINATION;    CELLS;    COLLAPSE;    CORRUPTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6730
RP-ID  :  WPS6730

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Scholars have often argued that crimedeters growth, but the empirical literature assessing sucheffect is scarce. By exploiting cross-municipality incomeand crime data for Mexico -- a country that experienced ahigh increase in crime rates over the past decade -- thisstudy circumvents two of the most common problems faced byresearchers in this area. These are: (i) the lack of ahomogenous, consistently comparable measure of crime and(ii) the small sample problem in the estimation. Combiningincome data from poverty maps, administrative records oncrime and violence, and public expenditures data at themunicipal level for Mexico (2005-2010), the analysis findsevidence indicating that drug-related crimes indeed detergrowth. It also finds no evidence of a negative effect ongrowth from crimes unrelated to drug trafficking.