Violence and Avoidance Behavior: The Case of the Mexican Drug War

This paper examines the effect of violence, originated from the Mexican Drug War, on avoidance behavior. The analysis uses three different variables to capture avoidance behavior by easiness to do, during the past year: refrained from going out at night (easy-to-avoid), refrained from carrying cash (medium-to-avoid) and refrained from using public transportation (hard-to-avoid). Data comes from different government sources and crime victimization surveys. Results suggest a violence effect of 6.72% on refrained from going out at night, 3.52% on refrained from carrying cash and 1.20% on refrained from using public transportation.