We provide experimental evidence that using body-worn cameras (BWCs) for police monitoring improves police-citizen interactions. In an intervention carried in Brazil in 2018, we find that treated dispatches show a 61.2% decrease in police use of force and a 47.0% reduction in adverse interactions, including handcuff use and arrests. The use of body-worn cameras also improve the quality of officers’ record from the dispatches. The rate of incomplete reports dropped by 5.9%, which is accompanied by a 69% increase in the notification of domestic violence. We explore various mechanisms that explain why BWCs work and show that the results are consistent with the police changing their behavior in the presence of cameras. Overall, results show that the use of body-worn cameras de-escalates conflicts.

Large literatures have studied the effect of age and life events, such as marriage and childbirth, on labor supply, earnings and consumption. In contrast, we know little about how age and life events affect location choices, despite vast differences in house prices and amenities across locations. This paper uses newly constructed individual level panel data for the population of Copenhagen covering more than 30 years to provide evidence on how location choices evolve with age and life events. We document several new stylized facts on how workplace and residence choices, commuting, and residential floor space consumption change with age and life events. We combine the reduced form evidence with a quantitative urban model to determine what factors are driving the strikingly different location choices of different groups. We use model counterfactuals to investigate the factors that drive the strikingly different locations choices of different groups and evaluate the effect of population aging, cohabitation rates and fertility on the geography of cities.