IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000089/006652.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Falling Kidnapping Rates and the Expansion of Mobile Phones in Colombia

Author

Listed:
  • Santiago Montenegro
  • Álvaro Pedraza

Abstract

This paper tries to explain why kidnapping has fallen so dramatically in Colombia during the period 2000-2008. The widely held belief is that the falling kidnapping rates can basically be explained as a consequence of the success of President Alvaro Uribe´s democratic security policy. Without providing conclusive alternative explanations, some academic papers have expressed doubts about Uribe´s security policy being the main cause of this phenomenon. While we consider the democratic security policy as constituting a necessary condition behind Colombia´s falling kidnapping rates, we argue in this paper that a complementary condition underlying this phenomenon has been the significant increase during this period in the speed and quality of communications between potential victims and public security forces. In this sense, the expansion of the mobile phone industry in Colombia implies that there has been a substantial reduction in information asymmetries between kidnappers and targeted citizens. This has led to a higher level of deterrence as well as to higher costs for perpetrating this type of crime. This has resulted in a virtuous circle: improved security allows higher investments in telecommunications around the country, which in turn lead to faster communications between citizens and security forces, which consequently leads to greater security. We introduce a Becker-Ehrlich type supply and demand model for kidnappings. Using regional and departmental data on kidnapping, the police and mobile phones, we show that mobile phone network expansion has expanded the effective coverage of public protection; this, in turn, has led to a spectacular reduction in kidnapping rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Santiago Montenegro & Álvaro Pedraza, 2009. "Falling Kidnapping Rates and the Expansion of Mobile Phones in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 6652, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
  • Handle: RePEc:col:000089:006652
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/8161/dcede2009-32.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gaviria, Alejandro, 2000. "Increasing returns and the evolution of violent crime: the case of Colombia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Isaac Ehrlich, 1996. "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 43-67, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adriana Camacho & Emily Conover & econover@hamilton.edu, 2010. "The Impact of Receiving Price and Climate Information in the Agricultural Sector," Documentos CEDE 7907, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alejandro Gaviria & Carlos Medina & Jorge Tamayo, 2010. "Assessing the Link between Adolescent Fertility and Urban Crime," Borradores de Economia 6860, Banco de la Republica.
    2. Fábio Augusto Reis Gomes & Lourenço Senne Paz, 2004. "The Determinants Of Criminal Victimization In São Paulo State," Anais do XXXII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 32nd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 147, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    3. Yu Liu & Thomas M. Fullerton Jr. & Nathan J. Ashby, 2013. "Assessing The Impacts Of Labor Market And Deterrence Variables On Crime Rates In Mexico," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 31(4), pages 669-690, October.
    4. Gerson Javier Perez, 2012. "Primera versión de la política de seguridad democrática: se cumplieron los objetivos?," Revista de Economía del Rosario, Universidad del Rosario, December.
    5. repec:uab:wprdea:wpdea1409 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Felipe Barrera Osorio, 2004. "Dynamics and causes of crime in Colombia," Informes de Investigación 2387, Fedesarrollo.
    7. Roxana Gutierrez-Romero & Alessandra Conte, 2014. "Estimating the impact of Mexican drug cartels on crime," Working Papers wpdea1406, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    8. Antonio Acconcia & Marcello D'Amato & Riccardo Martina, 2003. "Corruption and Tax Evasion with Competitive Bribes," CSEF Working Papers 112, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    9. Entorf, Horst & Spengler, Hannes, 2000. "Socioeconomic and demographic factors of crime in Germany: Evidence from panel data of the German states," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 75-106, March.
    10. Tom Kirchmaier & Stephen Machin & Matteo Sandi & Robert Witt, 2020. "Prices, Policing and Policy: The Dynamics of Crime Booms and Busts," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 1040-1077.
    11. Imrohoroglu, Ayse & Merlo, Antonio & Rupert, Peter, 2000. "On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-25, February.
    12. Milo Bianchi & Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Pinotti, 2012. "Do Immigrants Cause Crime?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1318-1347, December.
    13. Arturo Bris, 2005. "Do Insider Trading Laws Work?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 11(3), pages 267-312, June.
    14. Entorf, H. & Winker, P., 2008. "Investigating the drugs-crime channel in economics of crime models: Empirical evidence from panel data of the German States," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 8-22, March.
    15. Marie Claire Villeval, 2019. "Comportements (non) éthiques et stratégies morales," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 70(6), pages 1021-1046.
    16. Otto Lenhart, 2021. "Earned income tax credit and crime," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 589-607, July.
    17. Jaewook Byeon & Iljoong Kim & Dongwon Lee, 2018. "Protest and property crime: political use of police resources and the deterrence of crime," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 181-196, April.
    18. William S. Reece, 2010. "Casinos, Hotels, And Crime," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 28(2), pages 145-161, April.
    19. Vladimir Kühl Teles & Joaquim P. Andrade, 2005. "Crime And Punishment With Habit Formation," Anais do XXXIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 33rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 090, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    20. Justina A.V. Fischer, 2005. "The Impact of Direct Democracy on Crime: Is the Median Voter Boundedly Rational?," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2005 2005-14, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    21. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Oscar Volij & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2021. "Can more police induce more crime?," Working Papers 2107, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Kidnapping; mobile phones; Colombia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N46 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • O39 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000089:006652. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Universidad De Los Andes-Cede (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceandco.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.