The impact of police violence: Evidence from student protests

Abstract

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.

Reference

Felipe Gonzalez, and Mounu Prem, “The impact of police violence: Evidence from student protests”, TSE Working Paper, n. 22-1287, January 2022.