States' governance of gender is not unidirectional. In addition to 'stagnation' and 'progress', there can be an active reversal of rights already granted to women. Using the case of abortion rights in El Salvador, this paper investigates the following questions: What are the likely causes of...

This second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil theft equates to 5-7 per cent of the global market...

This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5-7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum fuels. However, the impact of oil theft is...

Empirical evidence suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with the arrival of international migrants. In this paper, I provide the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with longitudinal data from...

This paper analyses whether living in a locality with high crime against women affects the probability of early marriage-that is, marriage before the legal age of marriage of girls. We hypothesize that parents who perceive themselves to live in a high-crime locality would marry their daughters...

When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to political violence to influence which candidate wins...

We investigate the impact of childhood exposure to organized criminal violence on sociopolitical attitudes in Mexico, where an entire generation of youths has been raised amid the country's most violent conflict over the past century. We fielded an in-person survey to nearly 3,000 urban youths,...

I describe how monitoring and harsher law enforcement reduce the expected economic benefits of crime. I investigate the effect of shifts in legal authorities' surveillance by focusing on junkyards, firms often associated with illegal markets and auto theft. Starting in 2014, many municipalities...

Medicine theft is a leading cause of inadequate healthcare. Audits of public health supply chains suggest that up to a third of medicines go missing in low-income countries, disproportionately affecting those facing greater health risks and poverty. Despite much investment, policy-makers...

Although the provision of security to all their citizens is a state's fundamental duty, over 50 countries experienced armed conflict in 2021. The international development community has identified armed conflict as an impediment to development and provides considerable resources to reduce armed...