Nikita Melnikov, assistant professor of economics at the Nova School of Business & Economics (Nova SBE), secured an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council worth 1.5 million euros to fund the five-year research project Gang Crackdowns: Labour Mobility, Development, and Discrimination in Post-Gang El Salvador (CRACKDOWNS).
The researcher will study how societies transform when criminal organizations lose territorial control, focusing on El Salvador, where the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs controlled large parts of the country for decades. In 2022, a large-scale government operation led to the detention of more than 1% of the population, dismantling the territorial structures of these organizations. Previous research showed that the borders imposed by gangs restricted residents' mobility and their access to better-paying jobs, contributing to significant income differences between gang-controlled zones and neighboring areas.
The CRACKDOWNS project will analyze three dimensions of El Salvador's transformation: the impact of the operation on children's education and human capital formation, how economic activity and investment are being redistributed across the territory, and to what extent targeted labor market programs can reduce discrimination based on place of residence. Early evidence points to improvements in security and mobility, but in a pilot experiment with Salvadoran employers, candidates with identical résumés were 60% more likely to be selected when the address was outside former gang territories.
This is the fourth ERC grant awarded to Nova SBE and the only one this year in Portugal in the panel covering economics, management, and finance. Pedro Oliveira, dean of Nova SBE, highlighted that the project is an excellent example of research with impact and strong international dimension. Paulo Pereira, rector of NOVA University Lisbon, considered that the success demonstrates the capacity of Portuguese institutions to attract and affirm scientific talent at the highest global level.
