Experts have asserted that criminal activity is spreading throughout the entire Brazilian territory, and suspect that there is convergence in intra-regional crime rates over time. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the hypothesis of convergence in crime rates among different areas...

This article is based on a survey conducted within the framework of a technical cooperation agreement between the National Justice Council (CNJ) and the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), with the purpose of presenting an overview of criminal recidivism based on data collected in...

The Law 11.340, known as Maria da Penha Law (MPL), enacted in 2006, represented an important institutional framework in order to overcome domestic violence in Brazil. However, more than eight years after the sanction of MPL, there is a complete gap about empirical studies to evaluate their...

This paper expounds an introductory conception of organized crime, resorting to a few elements of conceptual, economic, institutional and strategic analysis. It seeks to build a preliminary overview of a social phenomenon, leaving out the perspectives of law and legislation. Discussing meanings...

This article verifies the different effects of legal repression over homicide rates across Brazilian states. We analyze the impacts of two different kinds of legal repression: incapacitation (rate of individuals serving time in jail in relation to 100,000 inhabitants) and deterrence (rate of...

Do more guns cause less crime or more crime? Some authors argue that the spread of firearms encourage violent solutions to interpersonal conflicts. Other authors, however, suggest that the defensive use of gun decreases economic crime. In this paper we proposed an identification strategy to...

The main objective of this article is to verify the impact of both the incarceration rate and the number of police officers over the homicide rates. Overall, our results suggest that the increase in both the incarceration rate and the number of police officers are important do deter homicides....

In this paper we estimate the welfare cost of lethal violence in Brazil and analyze the impact of regional, educational, and gender heterogeneities. In the adopted approach, which is based on Rosen (1988) and Soares (2006), we calculate the marginal willingness to pay to avoid the risk of...

This paper examines how Brazilian prosecutors promote compliance with labor and environmental laws while preserving or even enhancing the competitiveness of local firms. In the cases analyzed, prosecutors realize that the bottlenecks that prevent compliance are often located outside the firm and...

In Brazil, homicide rates are beginning to be high in terms of international comparison since the 80`s until today Rio de Janeiro appears as one of the cities where this phenomenon draws more attention. This article is an attempt to identify some of the causes of the high number of violent...