Environmental enforcement, property rights, and violence: evidence from the Brazilian Amazon
研究了巴西政府加强环境执法对亚马逊地区资源冲突和暴力的影响，发现执法改善能减少因产权不清引发的冲突，同时降低森林砍伐率。
Abstract 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.