Publications

“The Impact of Police Presence on Drug Trade-Related Violence” Economia (Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association), Vol 20 (1), 61-81.

Rio de Janeiro hosted two major sports events in a two-year period: the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympic Games. After the announcements of the city as the host of these events, the Government launched the Favela Pacification Program. The program consists of the expulsion of Drug Trafficking Organizations from territories where they used to exert the monopoly on violence. Our identification strategy exploits the time and space variation in the deployment of police forces and the organized-crime structure of criminal activity in Rio de Janeiro, to evaluate the causal effect of the program on criminal activity. The results indicate that the program caused a displacement of drug trade-related violence. We also find that the program caused a reduction of violence in pacified territories, but this result may be the consequence of contamination of the control group.

“The Unequal Impact of Natural Light on Crime” Review and Resubmit at Journal of Population Economics.

We use Daylight Saving Time as a natural experiment to evaluate the effect of natural light during working hours on crime. Our Regression Discontinuity estimates identify a decrease in aggravated assault and in robbery. The effect is statistically and economically significant: a 19.5-percent decrease in aggravated assault and a 9.6-percent decrease in robbery. The impacts on homicide and rape are not statistically significant. We find the decrease in agravated assault and robbery to be larger in areas with poor lighting infrastructure. The results indicate that property crime rates are responsive to changes in natural light and highlight the role that public services play preventing crime.

Work in Progress

"The Impact of Economic Benefits of Rural Crime on Criminal Behavior"

Incentives affect criminal behavior. A rational offender balances costs and benefits before deciding whether to commit a crime or not. In property crime, the economic returns to criminal activity is given by the value of the loot. However, the correlation between the price of a good and the criminal activity related to it is not proof of a causal effect. In this work, we instrument local prices with world prices, to evaluate the effect of meat price on cattle raiding in Uruguay. We provide the first estimates of the effect that economic returns to crime have on rural criminal activity.