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🌍 With ~60 countries still contaminated by landmines, our findings from Colombia offer a roadmap. Demining is more than removing hidden explosives—it’s unlocking human and economic potential.
📄 Full paper at @jpube.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1016/j.jpub…
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🧠 Policy implications:
Demining is expensive, but it pays for itself many times over!
📌 Target demining near roads and schools
📌 Pair demining with development (e.g. crop substitution)
📌 Frame demining as a long-term investment, not just post-conflict cleanup 👇🏽
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⚖️ Demining also reduces inequality.
Redistributed gains benefit the broader community—not just elites. This underscores its value not just as a safety measure, but as a powerful and inclusive development policy. 👇🏽
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🌳 Any unintended consequences?
No! We found no increase in deforestation or illegal gold mining—meaning that economic gains weren’t captured by extractive or illegal industries. And with complementary crop substitution programs, coca cultivation fell even further. 👇🏽
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🛣️ Which areas benefit more?
Connectivity matters. Areas with better road access see stronger gains.
We simulate the national economic impact using a general equilibrium model: Without demining, Colombia’s GDP would’ve been 0.7% lower per year (2013–2019). 👇🏽
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📚 Education improves immediately after demining:
•Schools reopen
•Enrollment surges
•Student-teacher ratios fall
•More students advance grades
It’s like giving children an extra year of school—just by clearing the ground they walk on. 👇🏽
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💥 Key findings:
✅ Nightlights (a proxy for economic activity) ↑ 11.5% ➡️ municipal GDP ↑ 0.7% ➡️ $1 spent on demining yields ~$6 in benefits.
✅ Population density ↑ 2.6%
✅ Math test pass rate ↑ 6.2 p.p.
✅ Reading test pass rate ↑ 7.5 p.p.
✅ Coca cultivation ↓ 9.9%
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💡Methodology:
We used geolocated data on 294 demined areas and compared them to regions not yet demined (but eventually would be). Using modern DiD methods (e.g. Callaway & @pedrosantanna.bsky.social 2021), we identified the causal effects of demining on local development. 👇🏽
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Context: Colombia has one of the highest numbers of landmine victims globally—top 3 for homemade mines. But in 2013, amid peace talks with FARC, Colombia began a large-scale humanitarian demining campaign. We analyzed its impact. 👇🏽
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🚫💣 Landmines silently continue to threaten lives long after conflicts end. But what happens when we remove them? In the paper, we study the economic and social effects of humanitarian demining in Colombia 🇨🇴. The results are, I think, quite powerful.
👇
Reposting here for folks who left X permanently.
So happy to see this paper finally published. And so cool that it found a home at @jpube.bsky.social !
This is paper summarizes what is perhaps the most policy relevant piece of research I’ve conducted so far. A 🧵:
Desgraciadamente, importantes partidos y medios de comunicación continúan dando eco y espacio a la idea de que la inmigración trae crimen. ¿Pero qué dice la evidencia? A esto respondo en mi nueva entrada en @nadaesgratis.bsky.social
nadaesgratis.es/santiago-san...
🆕 Climate change, natural resources, and conflict: Navigating a complex nexus
Today on VoxDev, Oliver Vanden Eynde (@pse.bsky.social) & @jvargas.bsky.social (Collegio Carlo Alberto) discuss how extreme weather and the green transition are reshaping global conflict: voxdev.org/topic/energy...
Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:
"Landmines: The local effects of demining"
By Mouno Prem, Miguel E. Purroy, & @jvargas.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#econsky
New paper out in @science.org!
“Brain drain” or “brain gain”?
Effects of high-skilled international emigration on origin countries
doi.org/10.1126/scie...
Very moving piece. Thank you for sharing it.
I am keeping a diary of daily events, as they unfold open.substack.com/pub/adamprze... It is available to everyone. I am new to Substack, so please let me know if something is wrong with the link or the file.
This is a deeply stupid and offensive article. The @nytimes.com is failing to rise to the moment in spectacular fashion.
Los invito a leer mi Op Ed en El Tiempo (con Daniel Mejía y Andrés Rivera) que resume los resultados de un paper que estudia el efecto de los ceses al fuego decretados por el gobierno colombiano sobre los niveles de diferentes tipos de violencia.
t.co/prKTktWwyl
Can’t think of a better choice.
This is great. Florian is an amazing colleague. 👏🏾👏🏾
Also my department. Follow us!
"The whole field of economics, or what used to be called political economy, was really founded by people who thought they should be telling other people what to do."
This recent talk by Nobel laureate David Card at @rfberlin.bsky.social, on Immigration and Minimum Wages, is magisterial.
Crime economists:
CAF-Development Bank of Latin America released this call for proposals to develop policy documents on organized crime in LAC:
t.co/Rs0JYvjApm
@jenniferdoleac.bsky.social
A thread about whether the global – and American – center-left needs a different kind of liberalism. These are thoughts triggered by Trump’s victory in the United States and the swing against mainstream incumbents in many other elections around the world.
Not every world leader pardons the hunter
🙋🏽♂️
Hey all, I created a starter pack with a list of Black economists and academics for an easily accessible list of folks doing research that we can all follow and cite #Blacksky #AddtoBlacksky #Econsky: go.bsky.app/RyKSzcb
Krugman bets Bluesky is the new old Twitter. Let’s hope he is right.
🙋🏽♂️
