Heather Bone is a specialist in the economics of crime. It’s the basis of her research and there are traces of it in her tutorials and involvement in the broader community. Her research, though, is not like the true crime stories Bone remembers her mother watching throughout her childhood in Brussels, Ontario. Her job market paper, Kingpin Down: Power Vacuums, Market Structure, and the Violent Consequences of High-Profile Arrests, studies a policy that is often used by governments to combat organized crime. The policy involves targeting the top leaders, or kingpins, of criminal enterprises for capture or removal. Bone’s paper studies the policy’s effects in the context of Mexico during a period in which homicide rates more than doubled.

“The government implemented the policy with the aim of reducing violence in the long term,” Bone explained. “However, my findings indicate that the policy leads to an increase in violence in the short to medium term, with no evidence of a long-term reduction.” [Read more…]