Assuncao, J., Gandour, C. and Rocha, R.  <br/><br/>
DETER-ing deforestation in the Amazon: Environmental monitoring and law enforcement 

 - American Economic Journal: Applied Economics   
 - 15(2), Apr, 2023: p.125-156 
<br/><br/> We study Brazil's recent use of satellite technology to overcome law enforcement shortcomings resulting from weak institutional environments. DETER is a system that processes satellite imagery and issues near-real-time deforestation alerts to target environmental enforcement in the Amazon. We propose a novel instrumental variable approach for estimating enforcement's impact on deforestation. Clouds limiting DETER's capacity to detect clearings serve as a source of exogenous variation for the presence of environmental authorities. Findings indicate that monitoring and enforcement effectively curb deforestation. Results hold across several robustness checks.- Reproduced