Impact of Violent Crime on Risk Aversion: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Brown, Ryan; Montalva, Veronica; Thomas, Duncan; Velasquez, Andrea
• 署名单位: University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Children's Hospital Colorado; University of Colorado Denver; Inter-American Development Bank; Duke University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00788
• 发表日期: 2019-12
• 页码: 892-904
• 关键词: preferences; HEALTH; DEPRESSION; BEHAVIOR; trauma; WEALTH

摘要

Whereas attitudes toward risk play an important role in many decisions over the life course, factors that affect those attitudes are not fully understood. Using longitudinal survey data collected in Mexico before and during the Mexican war on drugs, we investigate how risk attitudes change with variation in insecurity and uncertainty brought on by unprecedented changes in local-area violent crime. Exploiting the fact that the timing, virulence, and spatial distribution of changes in violent crime were unanticipated, we establish there is a rise in risk aversion spread across the entire local population as local-area violent crime increases.