How do alternative development programs, designed to diminish the presence of illicit crops, might cause unexpected consequences? This article studies how the announcement about an alternative development program, following the signing of the peace agreement in Colombia, resulted in an increase...

"Cocaine: Criminals, Routes, and Markets offers an unprecedented global analysis of the cocaine trade, revealing how the world's most lucrative illicit market operates today. Unlike previous works that focus on individual countries or regions, this volume takes a global view of the cocaine...

How does violence affect social capital? I argue that its impact depends on two factors: i) the ability to identify the perpetrating group, and ii) the intensity of the violence. These factors help to reconcile the seemingly contradictory effects of violence on social capital presented in the...

How does violence affect social capital? I argue that its impact depends on two factors: i) the ability to identify the perpetrating group, and ii) the intensity of the violence. These factors help to reconcile the seemingly contradictory effects of violence on social capital presented in the...

Cocaine trafficking has a significant but understudied influence on Central American economies. The economic implications of this trade have repercussions for both regional development and drug control policy debates, and therefore deserve greater attention. Towards that end, in this paper we...

Natural and agricultural resources for which there is a substantial black market, such as coca, opium, and diamonds, appear especially likely to be exploited by the parties to a civil conflict. On the other hand, these resources may also provide one of the few reliable sources of income in the...

Population growth with weak economic development can promote tropical deforestation, but government infrastructure investment can also open new frontiers and thus increase deforestation. In the Andean region of South America, population growth has been a leading explanation for both...

In Colombia, deforestation is one of the most relevant environmental problems, and the cultivation of illicit coca crops is often mentioned as one of its direct and indirect drivers. Over the past two decades, both dynamics have been converging, and are now found in largely the same areas. These...

This article breaks new conceptual ground by questioning orthodox interpretations of nation state agency in the global drug wars. Specifically, it challenges the David vs. Goliath conception of Colombia as a passive, client state simply abiding to the United States' hegemonic war on drugs. It...

Despite widespread popular accounts linking crack cocaine to inner-city decay systematic research has analyzed the effect of the introduction of crack on urban crime. We" study this question using FBI crime rates for 27 metropolitan areas and two sources of" information on the date at which...

Policies based on prohibition and repression to fight the war on drugs have largely failed in a variety of contexts. However, incentive-based policies may also fail and have unintended negative consequences if policymakers do not properly anticipate the behavioral reactions of people. This is...

One explanation for the increasing number of hectares with coca cultivation is that eradication strategies displace coca crops but fail to completely clear affected areas. In the drug policy literature, that dynamic shifting is commonly known as the balloon effect. This study integrates...

Well-intended policies often have negative unintended consequences if they fail to foresee the different ways in which individuals may respond to the new set of incentives. When widespread and persistent, these may lead to a net reduction of social welfare. Focusing on the case of anti-drug...

This paper studies the effect of interdiction on coca cultivation in Colombia. Though directed against intermediate and final stages of cocaine production, this strategy could also have an impact on coca cultivation by affecting monopsonistic activities of ilegal groups. My results suggest that...

The increase in the area cultivated with coca in Colombia has cast doubt on the country's anti-drug strategy and has encouraged skepticism about the possibility of a complete and definitive peace. Furthermore, this perception of failure has given rise to policy proposals based on the idea that...

The voice and role of communities, particularly their capacity to organise and resist, has been understudied in the specialised literature on illicit crops and largely ignored in policy debates. Based on ongoing research in Colombia, this policy paper explores the capacity of communities to...

"Drugs, violence, mafias, death squads, guerrilla armies, authoritarianism, corruption, crisis, death. These are the images conjured up when I tell people about my research on labor regime dynamics in rural Colombia. Sensationalized in popular films and mass media, Colombian society is often...

Contemporary scholars debate the factors driving despotic labour conditions across the world economy. Some emphasize the dominance of global market imperatives and others highlight the market's reliance upon extra-economic coercion and state violence. At the Margins of the Global Market engages...

This paper studies the effects of enforcement on illegal behavior in the context of a large aerial spraying program designed to curb coca cultivation in Colombia. In 2006, the Colombian government pledged not to spray a 10 km band around the frontier with Ecuador due to diplomatic frictions...