institutions and the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a crosscountry analysis for latin america africa and asia abstract the relationship between deforestation and income across 66 countries of latin america africa and asia is examined institutional characteristics as well as macroeconomic policies of each country are hypothesized to impact deforestation results show strong evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation for all three continents institutional structure and macroeconomic policy significantly affect the tropical deforestation process improvements in political institutions and governance significantly reduce deforestation the factors leading to deforestation differ across regions however and there is no one size fits all global policy recommendation for restraining the tropical deforestation process

frontiers and sustainable economic development exploiting new resource frontiers such as agricultural land and mineral reserves is a fundamental feature of economic development in poor economies yet frontier based development is symptomatic of a pattern of economy wide resource exploitation in developing economies that a generates little additional economic rents and b what rents are generated are not being reinvested in other sectors such development is inherently unsustainable the following paper explains this phenomenon and provides evidence that long run expansion of agricultural land and oil and natural gas proved reserves across poor economies is associated with lower levels of real income per capita the paper proposes a frontier expansion hypothesis to explain why the structural economic dependence of these economies on frontier land expansion and resource exploitation is not conducive to sustained long run growth the key to sustainable economic development in poor economies will be improving the economic integration between frontier and other sectors of the economy targeting policies to improved resource management in frontier areas and overcoming problems of corruption and rent seeking in resource sectors

do property rights promote investment but cause deforestation quasi experimental evidence from nicaragua abstract many policymakers argue that property rights decrease deforestation some theoretical papers also make this prediction arguing that property rights decrease discount rates applied to a long term investment in forestry however the effect is theoretically ambiguous the paper takes a novel instrumental variables approach based on nicaragua s agrarian reform to test for the effect using a new dataset nicaragua s 2001 agricultural census it finds that property rights significantly increase deforestation the model supported by the data suggests a likely mechanism for this relationship property rights increase investment increasing agricultural productivity and therefore the returns to deforestation

access based consumption the case of car sharing access based consumption defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place is becoming increasingly popular yet it is not well theorized this study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing specifically the consumer object consumer consumer and consumer marketer relationships six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access based consumptionscapes temporality anonymity market mediation consumer involvement the type of accessed object and political consumerism access based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of zipcar consumers four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified lack of identification varying significance of use and sign value negative reciprocity resulting in a big brother model of governance and a deterrence of brand community the implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange consumption and brand community are discussed

forest resource trade between japan and southeast asia the structure of dual decay abstract forest resource trade between southeast asia and japan has been noteworthy because of its documented effects on the deforestation of southeast asia s environment this paper expands the focus of this issue to include an examination of the effects of this trade on japanese domestic forests our goal is to redefine the scope of discussions of trade environment issues we assert that the environmental problems of the importer and the exporter can be understood as a set of structurally connected phenomena which we refer to as dual decay we examine the underlying dynamics of renewable resource trade and the effects of trade liberalization on both importers and exporters environments

an empirical analysis of forest transition and land use change in developing countries abstract deforestation is a major environmental issue in developing countries and agricultural land expansion is its main cause the objective of this paper is twofold 1 to identify the macroeconomic determinants of ending deforestation and 2 to explain cumulative deforestation and other land uses to do this we first study the probability of a turning point for deforestation i e the switch from decreasing to expanding forest areas based on the forest transition hypothesis second we adapt a land use model to explain the trade off between forest and agriculture during development to take the link between both phenomena into account we estimate a dynamic panel seemingly unrelated regression sur model along with a switching regression model applied to a dataset of 57 developing countries observed over four time periods the estimation results reveal that economic development and institutions play a significant role in long term deforestation our results also suggest that after the first development stage agriculture and forest are not always competing land uses these results provide new insights into public policies such as redd

how mainstream consumers think about consumer rights and responsibilities this article examines how mainstream consumer thinking is structured in order to form opinions about consumer rights government regulation and individual responsibility in the credit card setting a broader political ideology one that intertwines consumption practices with a causal narrative of business society and state infuses consumer opinions the article finds that four sociohistorically shaped political myths compete in this ideological space individual autonomy social equality consumer sovereignty and corporate dominance consumers negotiate tensions between each of these four myths for example individual autonomy versus social equality and consumer sovereignty versus corporate dominance this ideology triggers moral judgments among consumers about self and others that inform their perceptions of deservedness and apportions degrees of responsibility and blame across consumer business and government participants

changing political regimes and tropical deforestation expansion of agriculture is a main cause of tropical deforestation government policies and weak property rights contribute to this process by encouraging landowners and landless to accelerate land clearing using panel data common to previous studies we add the dimension of new political regimes democratic and non democratic and investigate how the rate of agricultural land expansion in tropical countries depends on the nature and persistence of each regime we find that both new autocratic and democratic regimes have accelerated the expansion of agricultural land thus yielding support to some of the findings in the earlier literature interesting differences emerge between regions with the impact being most pronounced in latin america we interpret these results mainly in the context of increasing tenure and ownership insecurity which in turn is driven by the tendency of new regimes to implement land reforms as a form of social and economic policy or voter payback the argument is developed more formally using a simple competitive land use model that incorporates political regime dependent confiscation risk and agricultural subsidy policy

public open access and private timber harvests theory and application to the effects of trade liberalization in mexico a common popular assertion is that trade liberalization encourages deforestation but whether this is true depends on how trade policies affect the allocation of land among competing uses and how they influence illegal cutting of public forests a model is presented that allows for forests to be either public or private and public forests are divided into protected or managed and threatened categories effects of price changes are shown on each part of the forest an empirical version of the model is applied to the case of mexico with nafta most scenarios considered show that nafta will have positive long run effects on forest cover in mexico but that this is net of losses on private lands

the economic importance of non timber forest products ntfps for livelihood maintenance of rural west african communities a case study from northern benin non timber forest products ntfps contribute significantly to a rural household s livelihood in the african semi arid tropics this study examines the income from ntfps and the dependency on these of different socio economic groups in northern benin using survey data from 230 households of two villages we firstly compared incomes of five different ethnic groups being differentiated by their traditional source of livelihood and regional provenance secondly we investigated disparities between three income groups on average income from ntfps accounted for 39 of total household income and had a strong equalizing effect on it however the economic relevance of ntfps differs between households poorer households are relatively more dependent on ntfps in order to fulfill basic needs than wealthier households however the latter extract more ntfps in quantitative terms and have significantly higher cash returns than poorer ones this is mainly due to a significant greater land holding moreover our study revealed that net income from ntfps reflects traditional sources of livelihoods of different ethnic groups in conclusion both conservation and development strategies should take into consideration the socio economic context of different beneficiaries of savanna woodland resources in order to apply appropriate measures to poverty reduction

strategic monetary and fiscal policy interactions an empirical investigation this paper identifies leadership regimes in monetary fiscal policy interactions in three countries the uk the us and sweden we specify a small scale structural general equilibrium model of an open economy and estimate it using bayesian methods we assume that the authorities can act strategically in a non cooperative policy game and compare different leadership regimes we find that the model of fiscal leadership gives the best fit for the uk and sweden while in the us the nash or non strategic regime dominates we assess the extent to which policy maker preferences reflect microfounded social preferences

technology spillovers and land use change empirical evidence from global agriculture we estimate the effects of agricultural technological progress on cropland expansion at various geographical resolutions from the country level to the world as a whole while formally accounting for the international interdependence of national supply responses evidence for these effects has thus far been scant contributing to polarized perceptions about the potential for improving agricultural technologies as a means to slow down deforestation we find that in most countries of the world growth in total factor productivity tfp is either uncorrelated or is positively associated with cropland expansion yet worldwide tfp growth have been an important source of global land savings the divergence between the country level and the global results is explained by the changes in production patterns as countries interact in international markets our preferred point estimate of the elasticity of global cropland to global tfp growth is 0 34 moreover we estimate that satisfying food demand from 1991 to 2010 without observed tfp growth would have necessitated an additional 173 million hectares or close to 10 of the area covered by tropical rain forests

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

privatizing an open access resource and environmental degradation abstract we develop a tractable dynamic model of the exploitation of an environmental resource with endogenous property rights we are able to explain both the evolution of property rights and environmental quality the model demonstrates that the development of property rights may emerge from within a community as a response to the overexploitation of an open access resource in the equilibrium of our model the resource is fully privatized and resource quality is greater than under the open access steady state we show that while environmental quality may initially decline privatizing the resource reduces its exploitation and eventually environmental quality improves

international timber markets and tropical deforestation the evidence from prices some scholars suggest that global timber markets especially those involving high value species are a leading cause of tropical deforestation despite limited empirical evidence this hypothesis rests on the assumption that global timber markets respond to a common equilibrating mechanism that provides strong enough incentives for loggers in the tropical regions of the world this article develops a simple model and taps into a unique data set on timber prices of hardwood and softwood in leading markets to test the global timber markets hypothesis while we find evidence of a global equilibrating mechanism with potentially significant economic incentives to affect tropical deforestation our results do not endorse the common conjecture in the literature that timber price shocks in developed countries lead to a homogeneous response in terms of deforestation everywhere in the tropical world instead they invite further development of structural global timber market models to assess the linkages between ma

trade policies economic growth and the direct causes of deforestation by ramon lopez gregmar i galinato please send correspondence to ramon lopez 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email rlopez arec umd edu tel 301 405 1281 fax 301 314 9091 gregmar i galinato 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email ggalinato arec umd edu tel 301 405 0477 fax 301 314 9091

effects of asymmetric information and reference emission levels on the emissions from deforestation and degradation abstract reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation plus as an important measure to mitigate climate change can effectively reduce the emissions caused by deforestation and degradation in tropical countries it is particularly important in the projects of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation plus that carbon emission monitoring and reference emission levels are tied to the revenues of a country however how do the reference emission levels and information of emissions influence project performance is still uncertain within a theoretical analysis framework this paper considers the confliction among landholder behaviors goals of policymakers as well as the distortion caused by the existence of asymmetric information the theoretical framework reveals two hypotheses through comparing optimal decisions under different scenarios i an increase in reference emission levels can lead to a decrease in landholders efforts and an increase in actual emissions ii information asymmetry caused by the increase of landholder s forest area results in an increase in emissions the empirical study uses panel data for 75 developing countries to test these hypotheses the results show that a monitoring reporting and verification system can help achieve the social optimum level for emissions and the efforts by landholders an increase in the forest areas owned by landholders and in rel will lead to an increase in emissions the empirical results also confirm this point at a global scale as well as regionally in africa latin america the caribbean and asia oceania as solutions for these problems an effective monitoring reporting and verification system is crucial in successful implementation of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation plus

economic and environmental benefits of eliminating log export bans the case of costa rica an increasing number of tropical timber producing nations have enacted bans on export of logs arguing that this will reduce deforestation expand downstream wood processing and improve the scale efficiency of domestic processing create jobs and retain more value added nationally the theoretical literature is clear that trade restrictions are generally welfare reducing except in special cases such as when there is a potential for an optimal export tax at best a log export ban is a second best policy tool for reducing deforestation and addressing the associated environmental externalities in overall terms the suggestion that log export bans can achieve the objectives expected of them is dubious however very little quantitative evidence exists to demonstrate this claim and the paper attempts to address this gap by looking at the economic and environmental impacts of eliminating a log export ban in costa rica the authors argue that eliminating the export ban is pareto improving and could generate economic gains as high as 14 million per annum with the possibility of relatively modest environmental benefits

determinants of credit card accounts an application of tobit analysis tobit analysis was used to examine the relative importance of household characteristics in determining the number of credit card accounts per household results supported theoretical predictions that households whose time was the most valuable would be most likely to have credit card accounts this study suggests that tobit analysis is useful for a broad range of consumer behavior studies

cooperation for sustainable forest management an empirical differential game approach we model the role of the world s forests as a major carbon sink and consider the impact that forest depletion has on the accumulation of co2 in the atmosphere two types of agents are considered forest owners who exploit the forest and draw economic revenues in the form of timber and agricultural use of deforested land and a non forest owner group who pollutes and suffers the negative externality of having a decreasing forest stock we retrieve the cooperative solution for this game and show the cases in which cooperation enables a partial reduction in the negative externality we analyze when it is jointly profitable to abate emissions when it is profitable to reduce net deforestation and when it is optimal to do both abate and reduce net deforestation assuming that the players adopt the nash bargaining solution to share the total dividend of cooperation we determine the total amount that the non forest owners have to transfer to forest owners next we define a time consistent payment schedule that allocates over time the total transfer

deforestation property rights and international trade deforestation primarily affects developing countries most developing countries share two characteristics 1 trade liberalization reforms in the last two decades and 2 weak property rights and limited rule of law this paper investigates this second best world first in a stylized model in which trade distortions are eliminated in an economy whose natural resources are subject to open access second empirically in an estimation exercise that disentangles the direct effect of trade on deforestation rates and an indirect effect through its interaction with ownership security in accordance with the theory the results show that only the indirect effect is significant

exploring the relationship between energy usage segregation and environmental degradation in n 11 countries numerous studies regarding the economic growth environmental pollution link have struggled to determine the effects of various forms of energy consumption on environmental degradation particularly in the context of emerging economies this study examines the environmental kuznets curve ekc for co2 emissions in n 11 countries during 1990 2014 by segregating three forms of energy consumption renewable biomass and non renewable urbanization and trade openness are additional explanatory variables that are used in the empirical framework using the generalized moments method gmm the empirical evidence confirms the presence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation for n 11 countries this study analyzed the interaction effects among trade openness biomass consumption and economic growth these interactions had a negative impact on co2 emissions levels of n 11 countries suitable policy recommendations have been provided based on the detailed results

redd and forest transition tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract international attention is focused on finding ways to reduce emissions from deforestation because of the emerging concerns over climate change however the causes of deforestation are rooted in current economic and development paradigms the causes of deforestation also vary across different geographical regions and have implications for the forest transition attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing deforestation have achieved little success despite over 30 years of un negotiations new initiatives from redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could provide financial incentives to curb deforestation hence alternative development paths for forest cover changes and forest transition are analyzed for the redd policy within the framework of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for deforestation the ekc models are estimated for geographical regions of latin america africa and asia the results based on the panel data analysis of 43 countries covering the period 1970 1994 provides evidence that an inverted u shaped ekc fits for latin america and africa while a u shaped ekc applies to asia the results also indicate that strengthening agricultural and forestry sector policies are important for curbing deforestation the ekc models estimates could provide guidance for decisions on financing the redd policy as specific to each region

what has driven deforestation in developing countries since the 2000s evidence from new remote sensing data summary using newly released and globally available high resolution remote sensing data on forest loss we update the assessment of the cross country determinants of deforestation in developing countries we validate most of the major determinants found in the previous literature generally based on earlier time periods except for the role of institutional quality agricultural trade hitherto relatively neglected is found to be one of the main factors causing deforestation focusing on the effect of international trade we show that countries with different levels of relative forest cover react differently to a shock in agricultural exports value we also emphasize that taking countries development into account may be critical in assessing global deforestation trends the impact of trade is high in countries still endowed with a large proportion of forest cover while it is lower in countries with smaller remaining forest cover we finally estimate through a simple calibration exercise the requirements for a cost effective redd policy for compensating trade losses in an open economy exporting agricultural commodities and endowed with tropical forests we conclude that in a world with increasing global demand it might be costly to compensate totally and thus to offer the right incentives for developing countries to limit deforestation

choice modelling and its potential application to tropical rainforest preservation abstract loss of rainforest occurs in part because of a global market failure problem markets routinely transmit signals about international demands for forest products such as timber but fail to transmit signals about demands for preservation to make efficient resource allocation choices decision makers need some framework to estimate the non use values that might be held by an international community for rainforest preservation non market valuation techniques can be used for this purpose but framing and other problems limit the application of the contingent valuation method cvm an alternative technique choice modelling cm appears to hold some promise because it can be used to model complex situations and to frame choices consistent with real life choices in this paper a cm experiment to assess the values that australians hold for rainforest conservation in vanuatu is reported the experiment disguises effectively the issue of interest rainforest conservation in vanuatu within a pool of other conservation locations also the experiment demonstrates that choice tradeoffs may involve a variety of environmental and socio economic factors rather than be concentrated on some monetary tradeoff the results demonstrate that a variety of predictive and valuation tools can be gained from a cm experiment and suggest that further development is warranted

explaining forest transitions the role of governance abstract we analyze how governance may influence competing land uses for forests and thus the occurrence of forest transitions across different low and middle income countries we develop a model of competing land uses that allows for governance to impact the risk of future versus current agricultural and forested land allocations the resulting hypothesis on the relationship between governance and the likelihood of a forest transition is then tested using cross country data the empirical analysis offers strong support for the competing land use framework and indicates that rule of law forest policy and regulatory quality influence forest transitions these findings inform not only the ongoing debate on forest transitions but also policy options for managing such transitions in developing economies

credit cards as lifestyle facilitators credit cards are an increasingly essential technology but they carry with them the paradoxical capacity to propel consumers along lifestyle trajectories of marketplace freedom or constraint we analyze accounts provided by consumers credit counselors and participants in a credit counseling seminar in order to develop a differentiated theory of lifestyle facilitation through credit card practice the skills and tastes expressed by credit card practice help distinguish between the lifestyles of those with higher cultural capital relative to those with lower cultural capital differences in lifestyle regulation practice are posited to originate in cultural discourses related to entitlement and frugality

the economics of tropical deforestation this paper provides a survey of first wave economic studies of tropical deforestation and land use these studies of tropical forest land conversion are generally at the cross country level we also conduct a synthesis cross country analysis of tropical agricultural land expansion the results show that agricultural development is the main factor determining land expansion but institutional factors have an important influence income effects tend to vary from region to region and do not always display an environmental kuznets curve relationship copyright 2001 by blackwell publishers ltd