A differences-in-differences approach to the UPP policy and crime displacement in the city neighborhoods and metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro.

Abstract

This thesis uses differences-in-differences causal inference method to study the impact of the UPP policy in the surrounding neighborhoods of the city of Rio and also the spillover effects potentially caused by it. Five types of crimes were taken into account: Violent death, rape, robbery, drug related and death caused by police intervention, each of them with a certain degree of relationship with the "drug trading cycle" Rio suffers. The model reveals statistically significant results for all types of crime, with the exception of rape, potentially revealing how UPP in fact only swept crime to other cities and the reduction of it perceived along the years was a general trend. An event study using leads was also used to increase robustness of the research, showing parallel trends assumption cannot be discarded for UPP regions.