Research

Papers

[Job Market Paper] The Global Allocative Efficiency of Deforestation

This paper quantifies global inefficient and spatially misallocated agricultural deforestation: carbon emissions-intensive deforestation on land with low agricultural yields. I overcome the limitations of a reduced form descriptive analysis by incorporating spatial cost differences, agricultural trade, and cross-country non-agricultural productivity in a trade general equilibrium model to estimate how they contribute to misallocation. Against a benchmark case with a Pigouvian tax at a $190 per ton social cost of carbon, 97% of carbon emissions from deforestation since 1982 are inefficient. Strikingly, these emissions are produced by only 13% of global agricultural land. Preventing these emissions costs only 7% of status quo agricultural production, yielding welfare gains of $6.6 trillion since 1982. However, an equity-efficiency tradeoff results: the tax burden falls on the poorest landowners. Lastly, if countries with carbon pricing policy apply these prices to deforestation, they would deliver 5% of emissions reductions achieved under the Pigouvian benchmark.

Link to Most Recent Draft.

Map of the stored carbon in trees in millions of tons of CO2 (top panel) and the potential yield of land across a set of staple crops in millions of tons (bottom panel). Each point is a 10 x 10 km grid cell.

An evaluation of protected area policies in the European Union

with Tristan Grupp, Mathias Reynaert, and Arthur van Benthem

Revise & resubmit at the Review of Economic Studies.

The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as a protected area, limiting economic development to favor biodiversity. We use the staggered introduction of protected areas between 1985 and 2020 to study the selection of land for protection and the causal effect of protection on vegetation cover and nightlights. Protection did not affect these outcomes in any meaningful way across four decades, countries, protection cohorts, population density, or land, soil, and climate characteristics. We conclude that European conservation efforts lack ambition because policymakers protect land not threatened by development or choose weak protection levels on lands that face development pressure.

Link to draft.

Media Coverage: VoxEU, Weekendavisen (Danish), Le Monde (French), The Kleinman Center

Left: Estimates of the average effect of land protection on a satellite-based measure of vegetation greenness broken out by country (bottom panel) and aggregated over the entirety of the EU (top panel). Our preferred estimate is highlighted by the doubly robust, "CSDR" bar.

Works in Progress

Examining the effects of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy

with Augusto Ospital, Mathias Reynaert, and Arthur van Benthem

We study one of the largest agricultural support programs in the world, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We document large differences in CAP crop subsidy allocation across countries, types of farming, and even productivity of farmers. This variable allocation of subsidy money affects the spatial allocation of agricultural production. This results in spatially varying impacts on the environment through land use conversion and fertilizer use. We investigate these impacts and consider alternative policy designs using a general equilibrium approach which uniquely accounts for the subsidy on both land use decisions and a livestock industry.

Tradeoffs and synergies for agriculture and environmental outcomes in the tropics [Review Article]

with Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Juliano Assunção, Teevrat Garg, and Fanny Moffette. Revision requested for Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

Global population is currently at 8 billion, projected to increase by 34\% by 2050 and plateau at 10.9 billion by 2100 (UN, 2022). Even in the absence of increasing incomes, feeding a growing population will require more land, more machinery, more agricultural inputs, and continued innovation in agricultural technology. The relationship between increased agricultural production and environmental degradation is a central challenge to human well-being. Will feeding the world leave it with less forest, contaminated air and water, and decreased biodiversity? Can we identify pathways to food security that also conserve or improve environmental quality? This article compiles available evidence on the relationship between agriculture and the environment, focusing on the tropics, where potential tradeoffs between food production and environmental quality are particularly acute because much larger shares of the population depend upon agriculture for work and subsistence. While our main focus is on land use, where applicable we also touch on associated environmental services, such as soil and air quality. We review current data and evidence and catalogue policies that highlight synergies and tradeoffs between agricultural livelihoods and environmental quality.

Evaluating the private provision of conservation: the case of Africa Parks

with Santiago Saavedra.

Since 2003, 18 national parks have been transferred to management by the African Parks non-governmental organization across the continent of Africa. African Parks invests heavily in infrastructure to prevent poaching and resource extraction on parks, and thus can either increase local economic development through investments or depress local development by cutting off access to resources like timber or endangered species. We review this private management scheme on both environmental and development outcomes. We find privately managed parks experience declines in deforestation, but that there is strong selection on parks which had low deforestation to begin with. We next explore the development impacts of these major infrastructural investments on nearby communities through nightlights imagery.

The effectiveness of carbon offsets. with Eduardo Azevedo, Susanna Berkouwer, Anna Russo, Arthur van Benthem, and Frank Yang.

Technology, trade, and variety: has agricultural technology changed what we eat?

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