Seminário de Pesquisa (EA) 23/09
Deixe um comentário / Economia Aplicada, Seminários de Pesquisa / Por Helena Camillo
Ocorrerá no dia 23/09/2026, quarta-feira, às 14h na sala 401A – FCE, o Seminário de Pesquisa “Cooperative Finance, Economic Opportunity, and Violent Crime”, na área de Economia Aplicada, ministrado pelo Felipe Garcia (UFPel e PPGE UFRGS).
Resumo:
Cooperative and other locally embedded financial institutions have expanded into many underserved markets in recent decades, often where conventional banking is sparse. Their growing presence raises new questions about how the geography of financial access shapes local social and economic outcomes. This paper studies whether the arrival of such institutions reduces violent crime in developing economies. We exploit the staggered entry of credit unions (cooperative, member-owned banks) into Brazilian municipalities between 2006 and 2023, in a difference-in-differences design with heterogeneous treatment timing. Credit union entry is followed by a decline in local homicide rates that grows over time. The decline is concentrated in smaller municipalities with limited formal economic opportunities and limited commercial bank presence, and the pooled magnitude is sensitive to whether treated and comparison municipalities are drawn from the same region. Following the entry, formal employment, average earnings, and agricultural insurance uptake expand, with the wage response concentrated in commerce and services. Additional evidence on mechanisms is consistent with an opportunity-cost channel in which cooperative finance raises the returns to legal work and reduces the relative attractiveness of crime. The findings document a social return to local financial deepening that complements the poverty-reduction effects emphasized by prior work on rural banking expansion.