ABSTRACT: Ecotourism is often hailed as a conservation and development strategy as it requires conserved landscapes to operate, and it can generate jobs. In this paper, I present rigorous empirical evidence on whether ecotourism achieves this conservation and development goals, and I explore the working mechanisms behind it. This paper is one of the few doing so, as even if there is a theoretical potential of ecotourism to be a win-win strategy, there are few evaluations of this activity on conservation and development. The absence of evidence stems in part due to the fact that it is rarely the case that ecotourism activity can be clearly identified in space. I circumvent this using the introduction of ecotourism specific concessions in the Peruvian Amazon. 

For identification, I create valid counterfactuals for all ecotourism concessions using synthetic controls – a data driven approach – and relying on a large panel data set. I further provide pooled estimates for  all the concessions, and use qualitative evidence collected in the field to guide the discussion on the estimations.

The results on forest conservation suggest that, on average, ecotourism concessions did not have a statistically significant effect on deforestation at conventional levels, and some evidence shows they were successful in maintaining forest cover. However, there is substantial heterogeneity across concessions: while some exhibit reductions in forest loss, others show neutral or even slightly positive effects on deforestation. These mixed outcomes are consistent with qualitative evidence and align with findings from previous research, which emphasize the importance of active on-the-ground presence and livelihood diversification as key conditions for effective forest conservation. In particular, forms of scientific entrepreneurship—such as biodiversity research, ecological monitoring, and partnerships with academic institutions—appear to play an important role in supporting conservation outcomes within ecotourism areas.

ABSTRACT: Do resource-extraction booms deter postsecondary education? We explore this question by examining the higher education-related decisions of Chilean high school graduates during the 2000s commodities boom. Mineral extraction boosts enrollment in technical education but lowers completion rates for four-year professional degrees. Effects vary by economic background, with dropout rates higher among public high school graduates, typically serving low-income groups. Our study highlights the unequal impact of natural resources on human capital accumulation across income groups within resource-rich developing economies

ABSTRACT: Using an online multi-country video-vignette survey experiment, we measure bias against extractive industries and foreign firms in individuals perceptions and preferences related to industrial projects with potential economic benefits and environmental costs. Individuals face a hypothetical industrial investment project with a randomly assigned implementing firm, which varies in one or two dimensions: nationality (foreign or national), and industrial sector (extractive or generic). We elicit several incentivized and non-incentivized measures of acceptance of hypothetical investments. We find a precisely estimated null effect on willingness to pay to block the projects across experimental treatments: respondents express similar reactions to the same information independently of the firms origin or industrial sector.