Environmental enforcement, property rights, and violence: evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

Unidades Organizacionais

Resumo

Conflicts over resources with poorly defined property rights have fuelled both deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon. However, what happens when the State enhances its ability to monitor and enforce existing environmental laws? We study the case of the list of Municípios Prioritários, a policy that allocates additional resources to verify compliance with environmental laws in municipalities with high deforestation rates. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, our findings suggest that an improvement in the ability of the State to monitor and enforce environmental laws can reduce conflicts over the appropriation of value from resources with poorly defined property rights. Consistent with existing studies, we also find that the policy led to a reduction in deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the current approach to curb violence in a region where the activity of mafias has considerably grown since the turn of the twenty-first century.

Palavras-chave

Blacklist; Brazilian Amazon region; Deforestation; Municípios Prioritários; Priority list; Property rights; Violence

Titulo de periódico

Journal of Institutional Economics
DOI

Título de Livro

URL na Scopus

Idioma

Inglês

Notas

Membros da banca

Área do Conhecimento CNPQ

CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::DIREITO

CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS

CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::ECONOMIA

CIENCIAS HUMANAS::GEOGRAFIA

Citação

Avaliação

Revisão

Suplementado Por

Referenciado Por