Economic and Non-Economic Factors in Violence: Evidence from Organized Crime, Suicides and Climate in Mexico / Ceren Baysan, Marshall Burke, Felipe González, Solomon Hsiang, Edward Miguel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baysan, Ceren.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Burke, Marshall.

González, Felipe.

Hsiang, Solomon.

Miguel, Edward.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w24897.

NBER working paper series no. w24897

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Economic and Non-Economic Factors in Violence

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

Organized intergroup violence is almost universally modeled as a calculated act motivated by economic factors. In contrast, it is generally assumed that non-economic factors, such as an individual's emotional state, play a role in many types of interpersonal violence, such as "crimes of passion." We ask whether economic or non-economic factors better explain the well-established relationship between temperature and violence in a unique context where intergroup killings by drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and "normal" interpersonal homicides are separately documented. A constellation of evidence, including the limited influence of a cash transfer program as well as comparison with both non-violent DTO crime and suicides, indicate that economic factors only partially explain the observed relationship between temperature and violence. We argue that non-economic psychological and physiological factors that are affected by temperature, modeled here as a "taste for violence," likely play an important role in causing both interpersonal and intergroup violence.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2018.