Globalization and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs

Retail prices of major drugs like cocaine and heroin have declined dramatically during the last two decades. This price decline has tended to offset the effects of drug policies aimed at reducing drug use in major industrial countries. The main finding of this paper is that the decline in the retail prices of drugs is related to the strong decline in the intermediation margin (the difference between the retail and producer prices) in the drug business. We develop the hypothesis, and give some evidence, that globalization has been an important factor behind the decline of the intermediation margin. We conclude with some thoughts about the effects of globalization on the effectiveness of drug policies and argue that globalization may have increased the relative effectiveness of policies aiming at reducing the demand of drugs.

Essays on Socioeconomic Shocks and Policies in Agriculture

The three chapters of this doctoral dissertation estimate the responses of agricultural productivity, production value of agriculture, and crop supply to some external shocks and policies. Using unique panel datasets for Colombia and the United States, this research provides new insights regarding the responsiveness of agriculture to some socioeconomic effects and related market policies. Chapter 1 studies the impact of armed conflicts in rural areas on legal agricultural productivity in Colombia by using a production function that includes violence shocks such as the forced intra-national displacement of the rural population from 1995 to 2017. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of anti-drug strategies implemented under a joint US-Colombia policy on the value of agricultural production of Colombian regions with coca crops. Chapter 3 examines the impact of a policy in the ethanol market on the supply of biomass from corn production at the extensive and intensive margins. Advisors: Lilyan E. Fulginiti and Richard K. Perri

Opium for the Masses? Conflict-Induced Narcotics Production in Afghanistan

We show that the recent rise in Afghan opium production is caused by violent conflicts. Violence destroys roads and irrigation, crucial to alternative crops, and weakens local incentives to rebuild infrastructure and enforce law and order. Exploiting a unique data set, we show that Western hostile casualties, our proxy for conflict, have strong impact on subsequent local opium production. This proxy is shown to be exogenous to opium. We exploit the discontinuity at the end of the planting season: Conflicts have strong effects before and no effect after planting, assuring causality. Effects are strongest where government law enforcement is weak.conflict, narcotics production, resource curse, Afghanistan

Modeling the drugs and guns trade in a two-country model with endogenous growth

This paper develops a two-country, dynamic general equilibrium model of endogenous growth with illicit drugs and guns trade. With a trade framework that unifies both drug-control policies in consuming- and producing-country, as well as explicit modeling of firearm trade, the model is solved and parameterized to study the dynamic trade-off and growth effects of various drug-control policies. A production-consumption growth trade-off not previously documented in the literature is found. Further, under different conditions, and depending on the resulting gain in formal trade expansion, there are economic rationale to either a prohibitive or liberalization drug-control policy

The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky health behaviors. It describes traditional economic approaches emphasizing utility maximization that, under certain assumptions, result in Pareto-optimal outcomes and a limited role for policy interventions. It also details nontraditional models (e.g. involving hyperbolic time discounting or bounded rationality) that even without market imperfections can result in suboptimal outcomes for which government intervention has greater potential to increase social welfare. The chapter summarizes the literature on the consequences of risky health behaviors for economic outcomes such as medical care costs, educational attainment, employment, wages, and crime. It also reviews the research on policies and strategies with the potential to modify risky health behaviors, such as taxes or subsidies, cash incentives, restrictions on purchase and use, providing information and restricting advertising. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

Addiction and Cue-Conditioned Cognitive Processes

We propose an economic theory of addiction based on the premise that cognitive mechanisms such as attention affect behavior independently of preferences. We argue that the theory is consistent with foundational evidence (e.g. from neurosciencee and psychology) concerning the nature of decision-making and addiction. The model is analytically tractable, and it accounts for a broad range of stylized facts concerning addiction. It also generates a plausible qualitative mapping from the characteristics of substances into consumption patterns, thereby providing a basis for empirical tests. Finally, the theory provides a clear standard for evaluating social welfare, and it has a number of striking policy implications.

Rehab or Relocation? Estimating the Demand for Cocaine through an American Port City Analysis

Over the past five decades American drug policy can succinctly be classified by two words: expensive and punitive. American drug policy makers have conducted the “war on drugs” largely through supply side intervention. As the theory goes, by attacking drug producers, drug prices will rise due to the increased risk faced by suppliers, this risk will in turn be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. In order to critically asses the merits of such an expensive antidrug policy it is essential to estimate the price elasticity of demand for drugs. The main finding of this paper is that cocaine users are extremely price inelastic and that a doubling of cocaine prices will result in approximately a five percent drop in cocaine usage. Further, policy analysis reveals that the theory driving supply side intervention is fundamentally flawed. Over the past thirty years, as antidrug spending has increased fivefold, drug prices have declined be nearly eighty percent – bolstering a conclusion that American policy makers need to rethink the “war on drugs”

The economics of the illicit drugs-for-guns trade and growth

Ever since US president Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1971, different drug control policies have been implemented in both consumer and producer countries. These include policies ranging from crop eradication to an interdiction of drug shipments to outright legalization of drug possession. In this paper we develop a novel endogenous growth framework that unifies international trade, drugs control and accounts for consumers’ rational addiction and optimizing choice of drug consumption. Our results emphatically show that a one size-fits-all approach to drug control is ineffective. We show that there exists a production - consumption growth trade-off around the policy priority not previously documented in the literature. Moreover, we show that in the absence of a fundamental change to drug demand, drug control policies are unlikely to reduce illicit trades for drugs and guns in the long run

Optimal plans and timing under additive transformations to rewards

The nature and role of additive transformations to rewards are elucidated for a general class of deterministic, nonautonomous, optimal control problems with many state and control variables. Conditions relating to the optimal choice of initial and terminal times and initial and terminal values of state variables are identified such that additive transformations affect optimal plans. General comparative static results are derived and the framework is extended to cover two common classes of stochastic control problems. Three applications are presented: the canonical adjustment cost model of a firm, a stochastic extension of an irreversible pollution accumulation problem with regime-switching, and an extension of a lifecycle model of retirement in which an agent\u27s retirement wealth evolves stochastically

The shadow economy in Colombia: size and effects on economic growth

Using the currency demand approach size and development of the Colombian shadow economy are estimated over the period from 1976 to 2002. In the 70s the size fluctuated around 20% of official GDP and rose to 50% in the 90s. The most important factors driving the shadow economy are unemployment and taxation. Analyzing the interaction between shadow and official economy, the shadow economy has a positive effect on the official one. Average growth rate of real per capita GDP is 1.11% between 1976 and 2002 and the shadow economy "explains" on average between 0.09 and 0.27 of this growth.Colombian shadow economy; currency demand method; taxation; unemployment; interaction between the shadow and official economy