Regional Disparities, Aggregation Effects and The Role of Space; Evidence from Homicide Rates and Personal Injuries in Colombia in the period 2010-2018

Felipe Santos and Carlos Mendez

prepared for the 2019 ARSC at Saga Univeristy

Abstract

This paper studies regional convergence and spatial dependence of homicidesand personal injuries in Colombia. In particular, through the lens of both classical and distributional convergence frameworks, two spatial scales are contrasted:municipalities and states. For both homicides and personal injuries, sigma convergence is only found at the state level. In contrast, beta convergence is found at bothstate and municipal level. The distributional convergence framework highlightsfurther contrasting patterns. For homicides at the state level, four convergence clusters are found, while two clusters are present at the municipal level. For personalinjuries, at both spatial scales, two clusters are found. Moreover, significant androbust spatial autocorrelation is found only at the municipal level. Overall, theseresults re-emphasize the role of spatial disaggregation as well as spatial depen-dence when evaluating regional convergence and designing regional developmentpolicies. Lastly, a discussion of the previous results and their relation to currentand future policies is also included.

link to the slides https://homicides-personal-injuries-colombia-2.netlify.com/#1

link to the working paper https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/97093/1/MPRA_paper_97093.pdf