Gangs | United States

Date: Friday, January 28, 2022. 1:30 PM. Location: LIVE-STREAMED HERE The Berkeley-Stanford Latin American Politics Workshop and Stanford CLAS present: "Gangs, Labor Mobility, and Development" by Dr. Carlos Schmidt-Padilla Dr. Padilla studies how two of the world's largest gangs — MS-13 and 18th Street — affect economic development in El Salvador. The emergence of these gangs was the consequence of an exogenous shift in American immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, he found that individuals in gang-controlled neighborhoods have less material wellbeing, income, and education than individuals living only 50 meters away, but outside of gang territory. None of these discontinuities existed before the emergence of the gangs. A key mechanism behind the results is that gangs restrict individuals' freedom of movement, affecting their labor market options. Residents of gang territory are also more likely t...