Abstract

MUNOZ-MORA, Juan Carlos. The Paths of Coffee: An Approach to the Relationship Between Rural Armed Conflict and Colombian Coffee Production. Ens. polit. econ. [online]. 2010, vol.28, n.63, pp.14-64. ISSN 0120-4483.

The Paths of Coffee seeks to examine the microeconomic implications of rural conflict in the production decision of the Colombian coffee growers. The hypothesis assumes that the armed conflict and the presence of illegal crops create persistent and systematic environments of social, political and economic uncertainty in coffee-growing regions that lead to fragile backgrounds which, together with the various market crises, build an unfavorable scenario in which small coffee-growers are forced to change their production decisions. This work aims to estimate the coffee production function using OLS and Stochastic Production Frontiers. The latter model allows a consistent estimate of the production function and an approach to the productive efficiency of coffee growers. We use a single database with information by coffee farm for the year 2006. The results suggest a negative relationship between the number of attacks and coffee production and, consequently, in the municipalities with the highest number of attacks production is up to 1.2 % lower than in other municipalities.

Keywords : armed conflict; coffee; agricultural household model; stochastic frontiers.

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