The impact of police violence: Evidence from student protests

Résumé

We study the protest behavior of teenagers linked to a student killed by a stray bullet coming from a policeman in Chile. We use administrative data to follow the schoolmates of the victim and those living nearby the shooting in hundreds of protest and non-protest days. We find that police violence causes lower protest participation in street rallies but more adherence to test boycotts. These eﬀects appear among schoolmates of the victim and not among students living nearby the killing. Negative educational consequences suﬀered by the schoolmates combined with previous results suggest that psychological mechanisms are a plausible explanation.