The main objective of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the mechanisms that shape the relationship between violent conflict and collective action. Conflict dynamics in Colombia allow us to exploit rich variation in armed group presence and individual participation in local...

The increase in the area cultivated with coca in Colombia has cast doubt on the country's anti-drug strategy and has encouraged skepticism about the possibility of a complete and definitive peace. Furthermore, this perception of failure has given rise to policy proposals based on the idea that...

This paper analyzes the potential for regional collective action in Latin America in the areas of finance, trade and infrastructure. Seven priority areas emerge. First, regional cooperation within increasingly important global financial and trade institutions (the G20, the Financial Stability...

In this paper, we study how between-group wealth and size heterogeneity affect success probabilities as well as aggregate rent-seeking efforts when two groups compete for the allocation of a pure public good. Unlike with previous models, we measure the utility cost of rent-seeking in terms of...

We experimentally study endogenous alliance formation and contest effort choices in a generic three-player contest. Differences in intrinsic or extrinsic incentives to expend effort cause self-selection. Weakly motivated players have an incentive to enter into an alliance and to free-ride on...

This paper proposes a new identification strategy to estimate the causal impact of illicit drug markets on violence using a panel of Colombian municipalities covering the period 1994-2008. Using a UNODC survey of Colombian rural households involved in coca cultivation, we estimate the...

We model the war on drugs in source countries as a conflict over scarce inputs of successive levels of the production and trafficking chain. We explicitly model the vertical structure of the drug trade as being composed of several stages, and study how different policies aimed at different...

We study collective action under adverse incentives: each member of the group has a given budget ('use-it-or-lose-it') that is his private information and that can be used for contributions to make the group win a prize and for internal fights about this very prize. Even in the face of such...

I analyse a group contest in which groups decide over two dimensions of membership-exclusivity: whether a member is allowed to join the group at all, and whether this member is allowed to join another group as well. If the prize is mostly private, group leaders do not offer membership in...

Spanish Abstract: El presente capítulo describe y analiza un proceso participativo llevado a cabo con el propósito de apoyar la construcción de acuerdos colectivos y un sistema de monitoreo ciudadano para el manejo sostenible de las cuencas de los ríos Suratá, en Santander, y Zulia y...