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Abstract
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped substantially after a peak at over 27
thousand square kilometers in 2004. Starting in 2008, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment
has regularly published blacklists of critical districts with high annual forest loss. Farms in
blacklisted districts face stricter registration and environmental licensing rules. In this paper, we
quantify the impact of blacklisting on deforestation. We first use spatial matching techniques
using a large set of covariates to identify appropriate control districts. We then explore the effect
of blacklisting on change in deforestation in double difference regression analyses using panel
data covering the period from 2002-2012. Several robustness checks are conducted including an
analysis of field-based enforcement missions as a potential causal mechanism behind the
effectiveness of the blacklist. We find that the blacklist has considerably reduced deforestation in
the affected districts even after controlling for in situ enforcement activities.