This paper shows that the contractual arrangement of ‘banking correspondents’ has eliminated entry barriers for the provision of banking services in Brazil. With the bank correspondents, banks are allowed to reach the almost 2200 municipalities without bank branches in 2000, connecting 45 million people to the financial sector. The evidence is based on the estimation of an entry model of financial providers in Brazilian municipalities. I estimate a zero population entry threshold for banking correspondents for the period from 2002 to 2007. The estimated population entry thresholds for bank branches in the same period are relatively stable at approximately 8000–9000 people. The population entry thresholds for the second to fifth players for banking correspondents are also consistently lower than those for bank branches.

This article sets out a data-driven approach for targeting environmental policies optimally in order to combat deforestation. We focus on the Amazon, the world’s most extensive rainforest, where Brazil’s federal government issued a “Priority List” of municipalities in 2008—a blacklist to be targeted with more intense environmental monitoring and enforcement. First, we estimate the causal impact of the Priority List on deforestation (along with other relevant treatment effects) using “changes-in-changes” due to Athey and Imbens (2006), finding that it reduced deforestation by 43% and cut emissions by almost 50 million tons of carbon. Second, we develop a novel framework for computing targeted optimal blacklists that draws on our treatment effect estimates, assigning municipalities to a counterfactual list that minimizes total deforestation subject to realistic resource constraints. We show that the ex post optimal list would result in carbon emissions over 10% lower than the actual list, amounting to savings of more than $ $ $1.2 billion (34% of the total value of the Priority List), with emissions over 23% lower on average than a randomly selected list. The approach we propose is relevant both for assessing targeted counterfactual policies to reduce deforestation and for quantifying the impacts of policy targeting more generally.

We exploit a 2004 credit reform in Brazil that simplified the sale of repossessed cars used as collateral for auto loans. We show that the reform expanded credit to riskier, self-employed borrowers who purchased newer, more expensive cars. The legal change has led to larger loans with lower spreads and longer maturities. Although the credit reform improved riskier borrowers' access to credit, it also led to increased incidences of delinquency and default. Our results shed light on the consequences of a credit reform and highlight the crucial role that collateral and repossession play in the liberalization and democratization of credit.