By Andres Ham Gonzalez, Juanita Ruiz

We estimate the effects of drug-related violence on individual labor market outcomes in a transit country. Transit countries do not have enough market power to determine the global supply or demand of drugs yet must deal with the consequences of drug trafficking activities. We implement a Bartik-type instrumental variables strategy which assumes that violence in Honduran municipalities located along drug transport routes changes when coca production in Colombia grows or contracts. Our results show that drug-related violence has negative effects on extensive and intensive margin labor market outcomes for transit country workers and has greater effects on women than men.

IZA Working Paper 17126, Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024. 

By Christopher S. Carpenter and Hai V. Nguyen

Bans on menthol cigarettes have been adopted throughout the European Union, proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration, and enacted by legislatures in Massachusetts and California. Yet there is very limited evidence on their effects using real-world policy variation. We study the intended and unintended effects of menthol cigarette bans in Canada, where seven provinces banned them prior to a nationwide ban in 2018. Difference-in-differences models using national survey data return no evidence that provincial menthol cigarette bans affected overall smoking rates for youths or adults. Although menthol cigarette smoking fell for both youths and adults, youths increased nonmenthol cigarette smoking, and adults shifted cigarette purchases to unregulated First Nations reserves. Our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for substitution and evasion responses in the design of stricter tobacco regulations

Cambridge, MA:  NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, 2020. 66p.