Economic growth theory highlights the importance of saving rates to explain the long-run economic performance of economies. While economic theory has provided an analytical and empirical framework to understand the determinants of saving rates, one of the limitations is that it excludes from the analysis the potential effects of armed conflict and political instability, although it has been demonstrated that such situations can affect intertemporal preferences in terms of consumption and saving. Using a sample of 55 countries with/without conflict from 1980 to 2015, we analyze whether aggregate savings rates are negatively correlated with the existence, intensity, and duration of an armed conflict. The results indicate that countries that have suffered some type of conflict exhibit a saving rate 2.7% lower on average than the rate exhibited by countries that have not suffered such conflict. Additionally, if there is a high-intensity conflict, the saving rates decreases 2.5% more relative to countries that experience low-intensity conflict. Finally, we found a nonlinear relationship between saving rates and conflict duration, suggesting that the impact of conflict on savings decreases with time. These results extend the literature on the effects of armed conflicts on the long-run economic growth.

Trust in the police is key to the state’s legitimacy and social development. Despite its relevance, many countries still have significant challenges in generating such trust. This paper presents a conceptual framework and a survey instrument to measure public trust in the police and explore some potential determinants: procedural justice, perceived effectiveness, the convergence of values between citizens and the idea of police forces, and integrity. We piloted the instrument in five Colombian cities---which represent 15% of the population---to examine its validity, finding satisfactory results. The descriptive results suggest that public trust in the police is strongly associated with the perception of the application of fair procedures, the convergence of values, and, to a lesser extent, perceptions of the effectiveness and integrity of the police. We validate the relevance of procedural justice with a vignette experiment, which shows that fair treatment increases acceptance and satisfaction with police actions and fosters citizens’ willingness to collaborate with the police. This study provides a practical tool to measure public trust in the police and its possible determinants and thus guides public policy efforts to strengthen it.

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We study criminal skills production and persistence by looking at the universe of incarceration spells and violent and non-violent property crime reports in Colombia. Leveraging detailed and geo-coded information, we find that property crime reports are higher around prisons on the days inmates are released. Two types of offenders drive the impacts: (i) property crime specialists—inmates with a prior conviction for violent or non-violent theft; and (ii) trainees—inmates with different criminal records but who interacted heavily with specialists during incarceration. We examine whether participation in rehabilitation programs or longer prison spells mitigate these effects and find no evidence for either type of offender. Although we are unaware of how many crimes these offenders would commit absent incarceration, these results suggest that incarceration’s specific deterrence or rehabilitation effects might be weak for these populations and that, in some circumstances, prison can foster rather than prevent crime.

We study the effects of broken windows policing on crime using geo-located crime and arrest reports for 80 Colombian cities. Broadly defined, broken windows policing consists of intensifying arrests-sometimes for minor offenses-to deter potential criminals. To estimate causal effects, we build grids of 200 × 200 meters over the urban perimeter of all cities and produce event studies to look at the effects of shocks in police activity in the periods to follow. We use spikes in the number of arrests with no warrant-which are more likely associated with unplanned police presence-as a proxy for shocks in broken windows policing. As expected, we observe an increase in crimes during the shock period, as each arrest implies at least one crime report. In the following periods, crimes decrease both in the place of the arrests and the surroundings. With many treated grids and many places exposed to spillovers, these effects add up. On aggregate, the crime reduction offsets the observed increase during the shock period. Direct effects are more immediate and precise at low crime grids, but beneficial spillovers seem more relevant at crime hot spots. The effects of broken windows policing circumscribe to cities with low or moderate organized crime, consistent with criminal organizations planning their activities more systematically than disorganized criminals.