IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/4618.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cocaine production and trafficking : what do we know ?

Author

Listed:
  • Mejia, Daniel
  • Posada, Carlos Esteban

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the information currently available on cocaine production and trafficking. The paper starts by describing the available data on cocaine production and trade, the collection methodologies (if available) used by different sources, the main biases in the data, and the accuracy of different data sources. Next, it states some of the key empirical questions and hypotheses regarding cocaine production and trade and takes a first look at how well the data match these hypotheses. The paper states some of the main puzzles in the cocaine market and studies some of the possible explanations. These puzzles and empirical questions should guide future research on the key determinants of illicit drug production and trafficking. Finally, the paper studies the different policies that producer countries have adopted to fight against cocaine production and the role consumer countries play in the implementation of anti-drug policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Mejia, Daniel & Posada, Carlos Esteban, 2008. "Cocaine production and trafficking : what do we know ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4618, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2008/05/13/000158349_20080513084308/Rendered/PDF/wps4618.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeff DeSimone & Matthew C. Farrelly, 2003. "Price and Enforcement Effects on Cocaine and Marijuana Demand," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 98-115, January.
    2. Frank J. Chaloupka & Michael Grossman & John A. Tauras, 1999. "The Demand for Cocaine and Marijuana by Youth," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Analysis of Substance Use and Abuse: An Integration of Econometric and Behavioral Economic Research, pages 133-156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Martha Bottía Noguera, 2003. "La Presencia Y Expansión Municipal De Las Farc: Es Avaricia Y Contagio, Mas Que Ausencia Estatal," Documentos CEDE 3060, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    4. Becker, Gary S & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 675-700, August.
    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. Ignacio A. Navarro, 2011. "Cocaine Cities: Exploring the Relationship between Urban Processes and the Drug Trade in South America," WIDER Working Paper Series 009, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. 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.
    3. Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo & Sandra V. Rozo, 2017. "On the Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Colombia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 570-594.
    4. Leonardo Raffo López, 2010. "Narcotráfico y conflicto: ¿por qué bajó el precio de la cocaína?," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 12(23), pages 229-258, July-Dece.
    5. Botero Degiovanni, Hernan, 2013. "The Effects of Drug Enforcement on Violence in Colombia 1999-2010: A Spatial Econometric Approach," MPRA Paper 49459, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Leonardo Raffo López & José Luis Segura, 2015. "Las redes del narcotráfico y sus interacciones: un modelo teórico," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 17(32), pages 183-212, January-J.
    7. Gerson Javier Pérez V., 2012. "Goals Met or Just Empty Promises? First Version of the Democratic Security Policy in Colombia," Borradores de Economia 700, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    8. Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo, 2013. "Bushes and Bullets: Illegal Cocaine Markets and Violence in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 11934, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    9. Daniel Mejía, 2008. "The War on Illegal Drugs in Producer and Consumer Countries: A Simple Analytical Framework," CESifo Working Paper Series 2459, CESifo.
    10. Juan Carlos Mu�oz-Mora & Santiago Tob�n-Zapata & Jesse d'Anjou, 2014. "Does land titling matter? The role of land property rights in the war on illicit crops in Colombia," HiCN Working Papers 168, Households in Conflict Network.
    11. Ignacio A. Navarro, 2011. "Cocaine Cities: Exploring the Relationship between Urban Processes and the Drug Trade in South America," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-009, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Ladino, Juan Felipe & Saavedra, Santiago & Wiesner, Daniel, 2021. "One step ahead of the law: The net effect of anticipation and implementation of Colombia’s illegal crops substitution program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    13. Mr. Peter L. Pedroni & Ms. Concha Verdugo Yepes, 2011. "The Relationship Between Illicit Coca Production and Formal Economic Activity in Peru," IMF Working Papers 2011/182, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Rubio-Ramos, Melissa, 2024. "Trust, violence, and coca," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    15. José Fernández & Matteo Pazzona, 2015. "Evaluating the Spillover Effects of the Plan Colombia in Ecuador," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 15/667, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    16. Arias-R., Omar Fdo. & Aza-Jacome, Alfonso, 2014. "From monopsonistic insurgent groups to oligopolistic cocaine traffickers: the market of cocaine in Colombia," MPRA Paper 60000, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo, 2008. "The War on Illegal Drug Production and Trafficking: An Economic Evaluation of Plan Colombia," Documentos CEDE 005123, Universidad de los Andes - CEDE.
    18. L. Leoncini & F. Rentocchini, 2010. "Counteracting cocaine production. An analysis based on a novel dataset," Working Papers 693, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    19. Mejia, Daniel & Restrepo, Pascual, 2016. "The economics of the war on illegal drug production and trafficking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 255-275.
    20. Angulo, Juan Carlos, 2024. "Books and bushes: Schooling decisions and coca production in Colombia," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 344036, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    21. Grisaffi, Thomas & Farthing, Linda & Ledebur, Kathryn & Paredes, Maritza & Pastor, Alvaro, 2021. "From criminals to citizens: The applicability of Bolivia’s community-based coca control policy to Peru," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    22. Melissa Rubio-Ramos, 2022. "Trust, Violence, and Coca," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 176, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    23. Paola Palacios, 2012. "Forced Displacement: Legal Versus Illegal Crops," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 133-160, April.

    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. Dhaval Dave, 2004. "Illicit Drug Use Among Arrestees and Drug Prices," NBER Working Papers 10648, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Carlos Casacuberta & Mariana Gerstenblüth & Patricia Triunfo, 2012. "Aportes del análisis económico al estudio de las drogas," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0112, Department of Economics - dECON.
    3. Dave, Dhaval, 2006. "The effects of cocaine and heroin price on drug-related emergency department visits," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 311-333, March.
    4. Suryadipta Roy, 2007. "Are Illegal Drugs Inferior Goods in the US?," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 35(3), pages 303-314, September.
    5. Anne Bretteville-Jensen, 2006. "Drug Demand – Initiation, Continuation and Quitting," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(4), pages 491-516, December.
    6. Jofre-Bonet, Mireia & Petry, Nancy M., 2008. "Trading apples for oranges?: Results of an experiment on the effects of Heroin and Cocaine price changes on addicts' polydrug use," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 281-311, May.
    7. Skokov, R. Yu. & Brizhak, O. V., 2020. "Consumption of addictive goods in Russian regions and its impact on the quality of human capital," R-Economy, Ural Federal University, Graduate School of Economics and Management, vol. 6(1), pages 50-60.
    8. Craig A. Gallet, 2014. "Can Price Get The Monkey Off Our Back? A Meta‐Analysis Of Illicit Drug Demand," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 55-68, January.
    9. Xiaoou, Liu, 2009. "Rational Addiction Evidence From Carbonated Soft Drinks," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51620, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Mark N. Harris & Ranjodh B. Singh & Preety Srivastava, 2024. "Cannabis and tobacco: substitutes and complements," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(4), pages 1-29, December.
    11. Kelly, Elaine & Rasul, Imran, 2014. "Policing cannabis and drug related hospital admissions: Evidence from administrative records," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 89-114.
    12. Andrew M. Jones & José M. Labeaga, 2003. "Individual heterogeneity and censoring in panel data estimates of tobacco expenditure," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 157-177.
    13. Yunker, James A., 2012. "Estimated optimal drug law enforcement expenditures based on U.S. annual data," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 356-371.
    14. Kenneth W. Clements & Xueyan Zhao, 2005. "Economic Aspects of Marijuana," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-28, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    15. Jeff DeSimone, 2002. "Determinants of Drug Injection Behavior: Economic Factors, HIV Injection Risk and Needle Exchange Programs," NBER Working Papers 9350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Aparna Soni, 2024. "Estimating price elasticities of demand for pain relief drugs: evidence from Medicare Part D," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 481-515, December.
    17. Jeffrey DeSimone, 1999. "Illegal Drug Use and Labor Supply," Working Papers 9906, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    18. Jeff DeSimone, 2005. "Needle exchange programs and drug injection behavior," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(3), pages 559-577.
    19. Michael Grossman, 2005. "Individual Behaviours and Substance Use: The Role of Price," Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, in: Substance Use: Individual Behaviour, Social Interactions, Markets and Politics, pages 15-39, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    20. Preety Ramful & Xueyan Zhao, 2009. "Participation in marijuana, cocaine and heroin consumption in Australia: a multivariate probit approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 481-496.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Environmental Economics&Policies; Crime and Society; Crops&Crop Management Systems; Economic Theory&Research;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War

    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:wbk:wbrwps:4618. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.