 Pains, guns and moves: The effect of the U.S. opioid epidemic on Mexican migrationGianmarco Daniele, Marco Le Moglie and Federico Masera Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 160, issue C Abstract: In this paper, we study how a positive economic shock to an illicit industry might foster migration. In 2010, a series of reforms to the U.S. health care system resulted in a shift in demand from legal opiates to heroin. This demand shock had considerable effects on Mexico, the main supplier of heroin consumed in the United States. We exploit variation in potential opium production at the municipal level in a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, which compares Mexican municipalities with different amounts of opium-suitable land before and after 2010. We find that people fled out of municipalities more suitable for opium production, many to areas close to the U.S. border and into the United States. This is due to the increase in violence and conflicts, as municipalities more suitable for opium became highly valuable to drug cartels. Overall, almost 95,000 people migrate within Mexico and 22,000 emigrate to the United States. Keywords: Opioid epidemic; Migration; Violence; Organized crime; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:160:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822001250 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102983 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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