Suchergebnisse

Entre 1998 y 2003 el precio del café en los mercados internacionales cayó 73 por ciento debido al aumento de la producción del grano en Brasil y Vietnam, lo que originó la llamada "crisis cafetera". En este trabajo exploramos el efecto de dicho choque exógeno sobre el conflicto armado colombiano. La pregunta es si la violencia política presentó una dinámica distinta en las regiones cafeteras en comparación con las no cafeteras, antes y durante la crisis. Haciendo uso de una metodología de diferencia en diferencias, encontramos que la caída del precio del café a niveles históricamente bajos generó un aumento importante tanto en la incidencia como en la intensidad del conflicto armado colombiano. También proponemos un modelo sencillo sobre la relación entre los choques de precio y el conflicto armado. De éste se desprenden tres mecanismos posibles de transmisión, cuya importancia relativa examinamos empíricamente. La sustitución de cultivos de café por cultivos ilícitos no parece explicar el aumento desproporcional de la violencia durante la crisis. En cambio, sí hay evidencia de que el aumento diferencial de la pobreza en los municipios cafeteros así como el debilitamiento de la institucionalidad, están asociados con mayor violencia política. ; Between 1998 and 2003 production increases in Brazil and Vietnam drove down the price of coffee by 73 percent in global markets, triggering the "international coffee crisis". We examine the effect of this exogenous price shock on Colombia's civil war, exploring whether politically-motivated violence presented different dynamics in the coffee -growing regions relative to the non- coffee regions, during the pre-crisis and crisis periods. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find causal evidence that the steep decline in coffee prices substantially increased both the incidence and intensity of Colombia's civil war. We also propose a simple model linking the price shock to violence and empirically examine the relative importance of three potential mechanisms. While crop substitution from coffee to coca explains very little of the variation, a disproportionate increase in poverty in coffee areas is associated with greater violence, as is a lower state capacity.

The "Resource Curse" posits a positive association between the value of natural commodities and civil conflict. In this paper, we suggest that the value-to-violence relationship differs across commodities, and that the factor intensity of production determines whether a rise in the price of a legally traded good will exacerbate conflict. We exploit exogenous price shocks for coffee and oil to test this hypothesis, using data on politically-motivated violence in Colombia over 1988 to 2004. We find that a drop in coffee prices during the 1990s led to a disproportionate rise in conflict in the coffee areas. Poverty dynamics follow a similar pattern, while substitution into drug crops do not, which suggests that it is the fall in income rather than the drug trade that fuelled this effect. In contrast, we find that oil prices are positively related to clashes with government forces, and that state revenue is used to strengthen military presence in oil areas. Our results suggest that the income channel is critical in determining how price shocks to labor-intensive commodities affect insurgency. However, for capital-intensive goods, the revenue effect predominates in mediating how the value of the commodity affects violence.

Between 1998 and 2003 production increases in Brazil and Vietnam drove down the price of coffee by 73 percent in global markets, triggering the ¿international coffee crisis¿. We examine the effect of this exogenous price shock on Colombia¿s civil war, exploring whether politically-motivated violence presented different dynamics in the coffee -growing regions relative to the non- coffee regions, during the pre-crisis and crisis periods. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find causal evidence that the steep decline in coffee prices substantially increased both the incidence and intensity of Colombia¿s civil war. We also propose a simple model linking the price shock to violence and empirically examine the relative importance of three potential mechanisms. While crop substitution from coffee to coca explains very little of the variation, a disproportionate increase in poverty in coffee areas is associated with greater violence, as is a lower state capacity.