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The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 106 No. 3 2024

Police Violence, Student Protests, and Educational Performance

Felipe González1; Mounu Prem2

1 Queen Mary University of London and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile · 2 Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, Universidad del Rosario, and CEPR

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 near the shooting on hundreds of protest and nonprotest 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 near the killing. Negative educational consequences suffered by the schoolmates combined with previous results suggest that psychological mechanisms are a plausible explanation.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_01186
Volume
106
Issue
3
Pages
712-727
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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