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.”
Instead of leading to the end of operations of criminal enterprises, removing the kingpins created power vacuums, which, in economic terms, led to major market restructuring. By targeting kingpins, the policy weakened the kingpins’ cartels. This encouraged their rivals to use violence to try and take over their territory.
“Controlling cartel activity is a priority for governments of most drug exporting countries around the world because of their far-reaching impacts on people’s lives,” said Professor Arthur Blouin, Bone’s supervisor. “Heather’s research on drug markets highlights that one of the most commonly pursued policies – taking down cartel kingpins – tends to cause turf-wars that increase violence, and in doing so may even strengthen the most powerful cartels and making the situation much worse.”
Bone’s research highlights the negative consequences of the policy for affected communities. The market restructuring created by the turf wars after the kingpin was removed led to a 49% increase in the number of criminal enterprises operating in municipalities where the policy was implemented. The entry of new competitors to the market meant that homicides rose by 32%. Additionally, her findings suggest that the violence directly affected civilians, including groups like women, children, and older men, who are unlikely to be involved with organized crime.
Although the policy’s effects were worst immediately after kingpins were removed, there was a long-term increase in criminal presence and an escalation in violence for two years afterward.
To conduct her study, Bone developed an entirely new data set to tracks the presence of criminal groups in Mexico. Using machine learning, she trained models to process over 21 million Spanish language newspaper articles. These models enabled her to identify whether the news articles discussed organized crime, which exact group and location was mentioned, and if the group was operating in that location. The approach enabled her to track the presence of small criminal organizations that increasingly characterize Mexico’s criminal landscape.
The undergraduates who have encountered Bone as a course instructor or teaching assistant have learned about her research in the economics of crime. In short, they love it.
“One thing I do to center students in my teaching is to regularly collect feedback surveys,” Bone said. “A common comment that I got from students was that they really liked the economics of crime applications. In my teaching dossier, I’ve developed a provisional syllabus for a course on the economics of black markets that I think would be a popular and unique course that most schools don’t have. Instead of just using anecdotal examples to explain policies, I bring in recent empirical research.”
While Bone has taken every opportunity to learn more about teaching in higher education, her own lived experience also continues to inform her work.
“When I started my undergrad at the University of Waterloo, I didn’t know I wanted to do economics until I had to take an economics class,” she remembered. “Then I realized this social science is not what I expected, it’s a good toolset for exploring a wide range of questions! I think I have been able to get my students enthusiastic about that fact too. My teaching evaluation scores are excellent in general, but especially above average when it comes to generating enthusiasm, which I’m proud of. I think it’s important to get people excited about the field. They’re more likely to stay in the field longer and possibly pursue graduate studies themselves.”
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