The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the information currently available on cocaine production and trafficking. The paper starts by describing the available data on cocaine production and trade, the collection methodologies (if available) used by different sources, the main biases in...

This paper presents a description of the new strategy for the fight against drugs implemented in Colombia since the year 2007. The Strategic Leap Forward, as the Colombian government has called the program, or the Strategic Development Initiative, as the United States Agency for International...

Este capítulo presenta una radiografía detallada de la microeconomía de la producción y tráfico de cocaína en Colombia. El capítulo presenta una breve descripción de la evolución en el tiempo de las cifras agregadas sobre producción de cocaína y luego seconcentra en describir en...

This paper develops a simple model of the war against illegal drugs in producer and consumer countries. Our analysis shows how the equilibrium quantity of illegal drugs, as well as their price, depends on key parameters of the model, among them the price elasticity of demand, and the...

This paper develops a tractable, heterogeneous agents general equilibrium model where agents face different costs of access to the educational system. The paper explores the relation between inequality of opportunities (in the form of differential costs of access to the educational process) and...

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of the microeconomics of cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia. The chapter first presents a brief description of the evolution over time of the aggregate figures on the production of cocaine, then focusing on describing in detail each link in...

By the time the Colombian government closed DMG and DRFE, two Ponzi schemes that were operating in Colombia until 2008, over half a million customers had deposited funds corresponding to 1.2% of Colombia's annual GDP. We show that the individuals who invested in DMG and DRFE obtained close to...

A recurring debate in the literature on crime control is whether an increase in the probability of punishment is a more effective deterrent than an increase in the severity of the sanction. This paper further explores this issue in the context of crime in Colombia. We use a natural policy...