Internal migration and drug violence in Mexico

Lorenzo Aldeco Leo, Andrés Jurado and Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez

Journal of Development Economics, 2024, vol. 171, issue C

Abstract: We study how internal migration responds to an increase in criminal violence in the context of Mexico’s 2007 War on Drugs. To identify causal effects, we exploit the changes in homicides generated by conflict between drug-trafficking organizations. Instrumental variable regressions show that high skilled individuals are less likely to migrate to a municipality where the homicide rate increased. Conversely, we find out-migration from municipalities that experienced an increase in murders but only to other municipalities in the same commuting zone. We interpret these facts as evidence that the migration response to increases in violence is tempered by moving costs. Using a discrete-choice model over destination choices, we estimate individuals would be willing to accept a reduction in wages of 0.15% to 0.58% to decrease the local homicide rate by 1%. The welfare cost of the post-2007 spike in homicides is in the order of 10% of GDP per year.

Keywords: Migration; Violence; Organized crime; Mexico; Spatial equilibrium model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438782400083X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:171:y:2024:i:c:s030438782400083x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103334

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().