On the Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets : Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Colombia
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 fronti...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/09/24990286/effects-enforcement-illegal-markets-evidence-quasi-experiment-colombia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22665 |
| Summary: | 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 arising from the possibly negative
collateral effects of this policy on the Ecuadorian side of
the border. This variation is used to estimate the effect of
spraying on coca cultivation by regression discontinuity
around the 10 km threshold and by conditional differences in
differences. The results suggest that spraying one
additional hectare reduces coca cultivation by 0.022 to 0.03
hectares; these effects are too small to make aerial
spraying a cost-effective policy for reducing cocaine
production in Colombia. |
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