Rios, Viridiana. 2020.
Overcrowding and COVID-19 mortality in Mexico. Mexico City: [Spanish] Habitat para la Humanidad.
Publisher's VersionAbstractWe explore the association between household overcrowding conditions and the probability of dying from COVID-19 in Mexico. Using a dataset of 117,851 participants who tested positive for COVID-19, our data suggests that overcrowding conditions, and poverty (measured by the income below the welfare line) are associated with higher probability of dying from COVID-19 in adult population. Other vulnerabilities such as belonging to an indigenous community, illiteracy, food insecurity, lack of access to social security, lack of access to health services, living in places with less than 5,000 inhabitants and age, are also associate with higher COVID-19 mortaltiy.
Ríos, Viridiana. 2020.
Corruption and inequality in Mexico. [Spanish] Mexico City: Oxfam Mexico.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Analyzing 18 thousand audit actions in Mexico from 2000 to 2018, this report shows that there are more irregularities in public spending in (a) programs with greater redistributive potential, (b) municipalities with higher levels of poverty, and (c) in items related to health, education and development services.
Phillips, Brian, and Viridiana Ríos. 2020. “
Narco-messages: competition and public communication by criminal groups”.
Latin American Politics and Society 62 (1) : 1-24.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Criminal groups often avoid the limelight, shunning publicity. However, in some instances, they overtly communicate, such as with banners or signs. This article explains the competition dynamics behind public criminal communication and provides theory and evidence of the conditions under which it emerges. Relying on a new dataset of approximately 1,800 banners publicly deployed by Mexican criminal groups from 2007 to 2010, the study identifies the conditions behind such messaging. The findings suggest that criminal groups “go public” in the presence of interorganizational contestation, violence from authorities, antagonism toward the local media, local demand for drugs, and local drug production. Some of these factors are associated only with communication toward particular audiences: rivals, the state, or the public. An interesting finding is that the correlates of criminal propaganda are sometimes distinct from those of criminal violence, suggesting that these phenomena are explained by separate dynamics.
Ríos, Viridiana, Oleksiy Ivaschenko, and Jesse Doyle. 2020. “
Cash transfers’ effect on government support: the case of Fiji”.
Disasters 44 (1) : 152-178.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
While some scholars have found that post-disaster government assistance benefits the incumbent, others have shown that incumbent effects are imperceptible or negative. This article contributes to this debate by using a regression discontinuity design of households affected by Tropical Cyclone Winston in Fiji, to show that the type of assistance provided is an important variable to understand the effects of aid on government support. Fijians receiving a post-disaster cash transfer are up to 20 percent more likely to be “very satisfied” with the government as opposed to those that did not. The probability further increases if the CT is provided along with in-kind benefits or vouchers but is not affected if citizens are also encouraged to use their own pension savings. This paper provides evidence in favor of an “attentive” citizen, capable of identifying government responses, and of possible effects of elite capture on the relationship between government and citizens.
Ríos, Viridiana, and Chris Ferguson. 2020. “
News media coverage of crime and violent drug crime: a case for cause of Catalyst?”.
Justice Quarterly 37 (6) : 1012-1039.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Evidence about the relationship between exposure to media violence and criminal activity remains mixed. While some scholars argue that exposure to violent media content "triggers" crime and aggression, others contend that media may influence crime, but only as a source of information about techniques and styles, not as a motivation for crime. This debate has critical implications for criminal justice academics as calls for policy are regularly made on the basis of research in this area. This article contributes to this literature by presenting detailed empirical evidence of how media coverage of violent crimes affects homicides perpetrated by drug traffickers at Mexico, and their crime style. With an empirical model that addresses possible bidirectionalities between drug homicides and media coverage, we tracked 32,199 homicides, their stylistic characteristics, and their coverage by the press. Our results show that when media covers drug homicides it influences the probability that other criminals use similar styles of crimes, but it does not change overall rates of homicidal activity. This is evidence against the "trigger" hypothesis, and in favor of “copycat” effects.