-
The Effect of Police on Crime: Evidence from the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo
- Economía
- Brookings Institution Press
- Volume 21, Number 1, Fall 2020
- pp. 47-72
- 10.1353/eco.2020.0006
- Article
- Additional Information
ABSTRACT:
I estimate the causal impact of police on crime, based on evidence from Brazil. To tackle reverse causality, I consider as a natural experiment the creation of a special police unit to intensify surveillance around a few tournament-related locations in São Paulo during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. To better isolate the specific impact of policing, I account for different ways in which the tournament may affect crime, namely, via fan concentration and voluntary incapacitation. Difference-in-differences estimates reveal that increased police presence leads to significant reductions in criminal activity. My estimate of the crime-police elasticity (−0.37) is close to figures obtained in previous studies, suggesting that this effect is robust across settings and remains stable even in a high-crime, weak-institutions context, as in the case of Brazil.