On the effects of enforcement on illegal markets: evidence from a quasi-experiment in Colombia

Daniel Mejia, Pascual Restrepo and Sandra Rozo

No 7409, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Pest Management; Science Education; International Terrorism&Counterterrorism; Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures; Crops and Crop Management Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On the Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Colombia* (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7409

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