C. Baysan, M. Burke, F. González, S. Hsiang, E. Miguel
{"title":"Economic and Non-Economic Factors in Violence: Evidence from Organized Crime, Suicides and Climate in Mexico","authors":"C. Baysan, M. Burke, F. González, S. Hsiang, E. Miguel","doi":"10.3386/W24897","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W24897","url":null,"abstract":"Organized intergroup violence is almost universally modeled as a calculated act motivated by economic factors. In contrast, it is generally assumed that non-economic factors, such as an individual's emotional state, play a role in many types of interpersonal violence, such as \"crimes of passion.\" We ask whether economic or non-economic factors better explain the well-established relationship between temperature and violence in a unique context where intergroup killings by drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and \"normal\" interpersonal homicides are separately documented. A constellation of evidence, including the limited influence of a cash transfer program as well as comparison with both non-violent DTO crime and suicides, indicate that economic factors only partially explain the observed relationship between temperature and violence. We argue that non-economic psychological and physiological factors that are affected by temperature, modeled here as a \"taste for violence,\" likely play an important role in causing both interpersonal and intergroup violence.","PeriodicalId":133187,"journal":{"name":"CJRN: Gangs & Crime (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134185017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}