Applied Economics

This paper assesses the impact that drug cartels and their  associated violence have had on development in Mexico. For this purpose, we monitored official and media reports to identify where cartels have operated with and without drug related homicides. Using the difference-in-difference kernel matching method, we find that on the one hand, inequality declined in areas where cartels were active without incidents of drug related homicides. On the other, poverty increased in areas that had both the lowest and the highest rates of drug related homicides. Two reasons could explain this increase in poverty. In the most violent areas, production, profits, remunerations per employee, the number of establishments
and employees declined in key industries, such as manufacturing. In the least violent areas remunerations in manufacturing also declined, and people migrated from the more violent places. Most of these migrants were mainly of low income.

The viability of national REDD+ programmes will depend in part on whether funds generated from sales of carbon credits are sufficient to cover the opportunity costs of forgone uses of the forest. We present the results of a study in which opportunity costs were estimated in 30 communities in dry tropical forests (TDF) in Jalisco, western Mexico, and we focus on opportunity costs of activities which result in forest degradation, rather than deforestation, since much less is known about the economics of degradation.  Current uses of the TDF include temporary clearance for shifting cultivation of maize, beans and squash in a system locally known as coamil, which also includes grazing of cows and smaller livestock, and gathering of firewood and poles for construction.  Our approach inventoried the net returns for each activity as opportunity costs of alternate land use, stratified by size of forest holding and by ownership condition, since part of the land under shifting cultivation is used not by the official owners but is rented out to landless farmers; the smaller parcels surveyed (0.5-1 ha) were almost all rented for maize production. Cattle provided the largest share of the returns, together with the government subsidy paid for cultivation. These two sources of income are captured only by landowners.  Per hectare returns to maize production increased up to 3 hectares, but decreased on larger sized plots. The main implications for the design of a system of REDD+ payments are (1) at minimum, payments for carbon would have to be higher than the subsidy currently paid by government for clearance for maize/grazing, unless this subsidy is suspended nationally; (2) depending on which activities are ´outlawed´ on forest land assigned to REDD+, the compensation payments, if made in full, would be between 2000 and 10,000 pesos or approximately (US$160-800) per hectare per year.  The social implications of making carbon conservation more profitable than the current uses also has to be considered, since carbon payments will certainly be paid to owners, rather than renters, meaning that some of the most economically vulnerable groups within the communities  may lose their livelihoods.  Overall, the opportunity costs per ton of carbon benefit appear to be high compared with the current price of carbon on the international market.

Forest degradation is linked to landowners´ decisions on land use particularly in shifting cultivation systems. Understanding the processes involved in this land use type is therefore essential for the design of sustainable forest management practices. However, knowledge of the processes and patterns of forest transition that result from this practice is extremely limited. In this study we used spatially-explicit binary logistic regression to study the proximate factors that relate to forest degradation by combining biophysical and socio-economic data. Our study region is within the Ayuquila Basin, in Western Mexico, a typical fragmented tropical dry forest landscape dominated by shifting cultivation. Through a survey and semi-structured interviews with community leaders we obtained data on the forest resources and on the uses that people make of them. Detailed forest cover maps for 2004 and 2010 were produced from high-resolution SPOT 5 data, and ancillary geographical data were used to derive spatial variables. The degree of social marginalization of each community and the ratio of forest area to population size were the main factors positively correlated with the probability of the occurrence of forest degradation. Livestock management and use of fence posts by the communities were also positively associated with forest degradation. Among biophysical factors, forest degradation is more likely to occur in flatter areas. We conclude that local drivers of forest degradation include both socioeconomic and physical variables and that both of these factors need to be addressed at the landscape level while developing measures for activities related to REDD+.

Downloadable! In this paper we use micro data from the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey for 1990 to estimate, for the first time, the private and social rates of return of different university degrees in Spain. We compute internal rates of return and include investment on higher education ...

Downloadable! Este trabajo contribuye a la escasa literatura sobre la evaluación multidimensional del nivel de bienestar de los individuos más desfavorecidos de nuestra sociedad. Se distingue claramente entre pobreza monetaria y privación multidimensional, para proceder entonces ...

This paper examines the effect of income polarisation on individual health. We argue that polarisation captures much better the social tension and conflict that underlie some of the pathways linking income disparities and individual health, and which have been traditionally proxied by ...