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Getting greener by going black: the effect of blacklisting municipalities on Amazon deforestation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2019

Juliano Assunção  and
Romero Rocha
Juliano Assunção*
Affiliation:
Climate Policy Initiative Rio de Janeiro (CPI Rio) & Núcleo de Avaliação de Políticas Climáticas da PUC-Rio (NAPC/PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Department of Economics, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Romero Rocha
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 2008, the Brazilian government blacklisted municipalities in the Amazon to better target efforts to repress deforestation. Not only were law enforcement and monitoring activities intensified, but also economic sanctions and political pressures were imposed on those municipalities. We use a differences-in differences approach to compare deforestation reduction in blacklisted municipalities and non-blacklisted municipalities. We find that: (i) the blacklisting has significantly reduced deforestation; and (ii) this effect was primarily driven by the monitoring and law enforcement channel – there is no effect on agricultural production or credit concessions.

Keywords

Deforestationmonitoringpriority municipalitiesQ23Q24Q28
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 115 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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