Background Under the EU funded project, ENACT (Enhancing Africa’s capacity to respond more effectively to transnational organised crime), the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime, the Institute for Security Studies and Interpol are developing an Index to provide a multi-dimensional measure of the scale and scope of organised crime in Africa. Project ENACT is commissioning a […]
Critique of Hsiang and Sekar paper linking legal ivory sale to an increase in illegal killing of elephants
There has been considerable attention on the paper released by Solomon Hsiang and Nitin Sekar on the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) website that claims that the sale of ivory to China in 2008 is the cause of the increase in illegal killing of elephants and demand for ivory. I looked at this paper with interest […]
A complex statistical methodology becomes more routine….
I recently completed an analysis for TRAFFIC International to describe trends in the illegal ivory trade from 1996 – 2014. These results are being presented this week at the CITES Standing Committee as part of the document on “Elephant conservation, illegal killing and ivory trade” (in particular see Figures 5-9). Clearly, it is the results that are […]
