Bloem, J. and Lundberg, C. (2026). Agricultural Technology Adoption and Deforestation: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial. Journal of Development Economics. 178: 103600.
Abman, R., Lundberg, C. and Ruta, M. (2024). The Effectiveness of Environmental Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements. Journal of the European Economic Association. 22(6): 2507-2548.
Abman, R. and Lundberg, C. (2024). Contracting, Market Access and Deforestation. Journal of Development Economics. 168: 103269.
Lundberg, C. and Abman, R. (2022). Maize Price Volatility and Deforestation. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 104(2): 693-716.
Lundberg, C., Skolrud, T., Adrangi, B., and Chatrath, A. (2021). Oil Price Pass Through to Agricultural Commodities. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 103(2): 721-742.
Abman, R. and Lundberg, C. (2020). Does Free Trade Increase Deforestation? The Effects of Regional Trade Agreements. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 7(1): 35–72.
Lundberg, C. and Lotfaliei, B. (2020). Finite-horizon Zero-leverage Firms. Applied Economics Letters, 27(14): 1160–1175.
Lundberg, C. (2019). Identifying Horizon-based Heterogeneity in the Cross Section of Portfolio Returns. Economics Bulletin, 39(2):1163–1175.
Foad, H. and Lundberg, C. (2017). The Determinants of Portfolio Investment in Offshore Financial Centers. International Review of Financial Analysis, 54, 76–86.
Kalodimos, J. and Lundberg, C. (2017). Shareholder rights in mergers and acquisitions: Are appraisal rights being abused? Finance Research Letters, 22, 53-57.
Child Labor Standards in Regional Trade Agreements: Theory and Evidence with Ryan Abman, Michele Ruta, and John McLaren
Revise and Resubmit at the Review of Economics and Statistics
NBER Working Paper, 30908; World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 10331
ABSTRACT: We study the impact of child labor standards in Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) on a variety of child labor market outcomes, including employment, education, and household inequality. We develop a stylized general equilibrium model of child labor in an economy open to international trade and consider the impact of RTAs with and without child labor bans. We empirically investigate the effects of these clauses in trade agreements in a broad international panel of 101 developing countries using harmonized survey microdata. Exploiting quasi-experimental methods to obtain plausibly causal estimates, we find that RTAs without child-labor bans lead to reductions in child employment and increases in school enrollment, particularly for older children aged 14–17. Child labor bans in RTAs perversely increase child employment among 14–17 year olds and decrease school enrollment for both young and older children. These effects appear to decrease inter-household income inequality through increased child earnings. Our findings are consistent with theoretical predictions from our model and the literature on child labor bans.
The Limits of Cross-border Environmental Policies: Trade Diversion as Leakage with Ryan Abman and Hattie Jenkins
Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
ABSTRACT: Global environmental externalities are one of the most pressing policy challenges of the modern era. Unilateral policy options to address global externalities are limited, however, by sovereignty and a general difficulty in achieving environmental objectives across national borders. We study an emerging trade policy tool used in cross-border environmental policies---environmental standards for imports---using a European Union program aimed at mitigating illegal forest loss in tropical timber exporting countries. Through bilateral agreements with partner countries, the program established de facto import restrictions through supply chain transparency and certification requirements on forest-products. We find that the program had little impact on deforestation across program partners. Instead, the policy lead to a change in the destination of partner country exports away from the EU towards other markets, particularly in East Asia. Our findings highlight the role that trade diversion can play as a leakage mechanism in such cross-border environmental policies.
Strengthening International Environmental Agreements through Trade Policy with Ryan Abman and Dan Szmurlo
Previously circulated as "Trade, Emissions and Environmental Spillovers: Issue linkages in Regional Trade Agreements" World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 10319
ABSTRACT: We consider the impact of linking trade liberalization---in the form of regional trade agreements (RTAs)---to international environmental agreements. We develop a stylized model of optimal environmental regulation under environmental treaties and consider the effects of trade liberalization on participation in the environmental treaty and regulatory compliance. We find that trade liberalization itself can encourage participation in environmental agreements and directly linking trade policy to environmental treaties can further strengthen them. We empirically study this problem in the context of the Montreal Protocol, the watershed environmental agreement regulating ozone depleting substances (ODS). We find that cumulative exposure to trade agreements, especially those including ODS-related commitments, increases the speed at which countries ratify Montreal Protocol amendments. We provide causal evidence that signing a new trade agreement leads to increases in ODS consumption relative to Montreal Protocol targets. However, explicitly linking the trade agreement to Montreal Protocol commitments offsets or entirely reverses these increases. Our results highlight an important policy tool in addressing global environmental challenges.
Transportation Infrastructure, Market Access and Deforestation with Ian Herzog and Yue Yu
ABSTRACT: We study the impacts of transportation infrastructure improvements on forest loss in Uganda between 2001--2021 using a large-scale national road upgrade program. We combine high-resolution panel data on deforestation with changes in travel times to major markets caused by road improvements. Controlling for the endogeneity of infrastructure upgrades, we find that improved market access caused local forest loss. These effects are not driven by agricultural land expansion--we find market access improvements led to lower agricultural activity, as reflected in both survey microdata as well as satellite-derived proxies of agricultural production. Instead, we find evidence consistent with deforestation driven by a charcoal and firewood supply response from improvements in rural producer access to urban markets with relatively high charcoal prices. Our findings highlight the important role that natural resource access and forest-product price differentials can play in the general equilibrium effects of transportation infrastructure improvements.
Free Trade and the Environmental Impacts of Agriculture with Stephanie Hutson
ABSTRACT: The past 70 years have seen an unprecedented increase in agricultural productivity. In particular, agricultural intensification through fertilizer applications has facilitated more efficient agricultural production, improving food security in developing nations and reducing pressures to expand agricultural production into sensitive ecosystems. However, more intensive production techniques can carry higher environmental costs, particularly with respect to emissions of major greenhouse gases (GHG). Leveraging the exogenous timing of entry into force of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in a multiple overlapping event study framework, we estimate causal impacts of trade liberalization on agricultural intensification and agricultural emissions. We find significant reductions in agricultural use of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash following trade liberalization with corresponding reductions in agricultural emissions of nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide. Our findings are driven by developing countries and countries that are net agricultural commodity exporters.
Agricultural Contracting and Transportation Costs with Tristan Skolrud
ABSTRACT: Agricultural contracts are important tools in risk management for both producers and contractors. Critically, contracts can eliminate commodity price uncertainty, with output prices and delivery locations agreed to in advance. However, contracts also introduce a degree of inflexibility in producers’ ability to respond to changes in input prices. In particular, by committing to delivery locations and output quantities in advance, producers expose themselves to uncertainty in transportation costs. We develop a simple model of endogenous contracting where producers face both output price risk and transportation cost risk. Our model predicts that contracting intensity is a decreasing function of distance-to-market and transportation costs more generally. These findings have important implications for contracting as a development tool, particularly as it relates to transportation infrastructure in developing countries.
Local Democratic Institutions and Natural Resource Management: Evidence from Indonesia's Transition to Direct Local Elections with Ryan Abman
ABSTRACT: Local democratic institutions have important implications for natural resource management, especially when extraction is associated with environmental externalities. We study the effects of a transition to direct local democratic institutions on natural resource management using a political agency model with electoral competition. Our model of political decentralization suggests that this transition will lead to an increase in local extraction with greater negative externalities. In localities with weak electoral competition, agency costs are higher and the transition leads to resource rent capture by corrupt officials with illegal extraction in protected areas. In localities with strong competition, increased extraction is through legal channels and is associated with local increases in welfare. We use Indonesia's transition from locally-appointed leaders to locally-elected leaders as a natural experiment to study forest management. The timing of local elections varied district-to-district both across and within provinces and was determined by the local appointment cycles before the transition. Using high-resolution satellite data on forest cover loss, we apply a difference-in-differences approach and find significant evidence that district-level deforestation increased following direct local elections. In districts with weak electoral competition, this deforestation appears consistent with resource rent capture by corrupt officials driven by illegal logging in protected areas and no commensurate increase in economic development. In contrast, deforestation in districts with high electoral competition appears to be driven by local development.
Multiple-horizon Regression
ABSTRACT: I develop a new class of time series models that explicitly identify horizon-based economic relationships in a unified linear regression framework. Horizon-based effects are identified using an additive decomposition of regressors in the time domain that corresponds to an orthogonal partition in the frequency domain. This additive decomposition is accomplished with a multiresolution analysis associated with a maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform. I propose a simple OLS estimator for the class of models that allows for heterogeneity of marginal effects across horizons and establish asymptotic properties of the estimator. The new framework is robust to horizon-based misspecification—meaning that when the model is inappropriately applied to time series regressions, valid inference is still possible. Inference is also largely robust to the stationarity (or more generally, persistence) of decomposed regressor variables. Furthermore, in contrast to existing methods like long-horizon regressions, time horizons are disentangled from predictive horizons in this new framework. The new class of model also offers improved inference on seasonal relationships between regressand and regressors.
Trade Policy and the International Market for Agricultural Land with Ryan Abman, Frederik Noack and Ana Palacios (Principal Investigator: $800,000 USDA/NIFA 2023-67024-39117)
Trade and Education with Ryan Abman, Leah Lakdawala and Eduardo Nakasone
Whither Thou Goest, Deforestation will go: Mennonite Migration and Land Use Change in Latin America with Ryan Abman and Enno Klotz
Innovation, Environmental Externalities and Optimal Regulation
Lithium Mining, Water Access and Environmental Externalities with Victoria Wenxin Xie
Forest Resources and the Clean Energy Transition: Barriers and Benefits to LPG Adoption with Ryan Abman (Principal Investigator: £30,000 International Growth Centre)