Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis paper investigates the impact of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs on crime. Making use of a unique dataset combining detailed school characteristics with time and geo-referenced crime information from the city of São Paulo, Brazil, we estimate the contemporaneous effect of the Bolsa Família program on crime. We address the endogeneity of CCT coverage by exploiting the 2008 expansion of the program to adolescents aged 16 and 17. We construct an instrument that combines the timing of expansion and the initial demographic composition of schools to identify plausibly exogenous variations in the number of children covered by Bolsa Família. We find a robust and significant negative impact of Bolsa Família coverage on crime. The evidence suggests that the main effect works through increased household income or changed peer group, rather than from incapacitation from time spent in school.

Despite the "minimal effects" conventional wisdom, whether and how campaign advertising influence elections outcome remains an open question. This is paradoxical because in the absence of a causal link from advertising to candidate performance, it is difficult to rationalize the amounts spent on campaigns in general, and on TV advertising in particular. However, most studies using US data suffer from omitted variable bias and reverse causality problems caused by the decentralized market-based method of allocating campaign spending and TV advertising. In contrast with received literature, we explore a quasi-natural experiment produced by the Brazilian electoral legislation, and show that TV and radio advertising has a much larger impact on election outcomes than previously found. In Brazil, by law, campaign advertising is free of charge and allocated among candidates in a centralized manner.Gubernatorial elections work in a runoff system. While in the first round, candidates' TV and radio time shares are determined by their coalitions' share of seats in the national parliament, the two most voted candidates split equally TV time if a second round is necessary. Differences in TV and radio advertising time between the first and second rounds are a source of exogenous variation to evaluate the impact of TV advertising on election outcomes. We find that a one percentage point increase in TV time causes a 0.247 percentage point increase in votes. Since TV advertising is the most important item in campaign expenditures, this result sheds light on the more general question of the effect of campaign spending on elections outcome.

This paper documents a rare phenomenon: the consequence of the dominance of a single criminal gang in the city of São Paulo, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). Using unique data to identify entry in geographically well-delimited areasthe Favelas-we explore the timing of the expansion of geographical dominance to estimate the causal impact of its dominance on property and violent crime. Pax Monopolista caused a reduction in violent crime but no impact on property crime. Small sections of text, that are less than two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission as long as this document is stated. Findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of its author(s), and it cannot be, in any way, attributed to CAF, its Executive Directors or the countries they represent. CAF does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and is not, in any way, responsible for any consequences resulting from its use.

Costa would like to stress that opinions expressed here are solely hers, and do not reflect any official position of the Brazilian Central Bank. Authors would like to thank Cornélio Pimentel, Daniel Sanchez and Plinio Romanini from DESIG/BCB for sharing the data. Johan Albino shared important informations about judicial disputes over payroll lending. We would also like to thank Tony Takeda, Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, Renato Flôres, Benny Parnes, and participants at the IASE-NBER conference for comments and suggestions. Usual disclaimer applies. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Electoral Rules, Political Competition and Fiscal Expenditures: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Brazilian Municipalities * We exploit a discontinuity in Brazilian municipal election rules to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on policy choices. In municipalities with less than 200,000 voters mayors are elected with a plurality of the vote. In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters a runoff election takes place among the top two candidates if neither achieves a majority of the votes. We show that the possibility of runoff increases political competition. We use the discontinuity as a source of exogenous variation to infer causality from political competition to fiscal policy. Our results suggest that political competition induces more investment and less current expenditures, particularly personnel expenditures. The impact of political competition is larger when incumbents can run for reelection, suggesting incentives matter insofar as incumbents can themselves remain in office.