Research

Working papers

"Reaping What You Didn't Sow: Planned Development, Palm Oil, and Tropical Deforestation" [link] (Under Review)

Abstract: I use Indonesia’s Transmigration Program, which resettled millions of households into planned villages in the 1970s–1980s, to study how state-led development can generate long-run path dependence in tropical forest degradation. I exploit oil-price-driven variation in program implementation and use indigenous villages in planned but never realized areas as counterfactuals. Environmental outcomes are measured by constructing a quality-adjusted forest stock that combines forest extent with a novel global measure of forest integrity. With a rich set of geographic and agricultural placement covariates and using a doubly robust reweighting estimator, I find that transmigrant-founded villages exhibit persistently lower forest outcomes in 2019 than comparable indigenous villages in planned areas, with detectable effects both in the very long run and since decentralization reforms in 2001. I decompose the effects into extensive and intensive margins and find declines along both dimensions. Transmigrant villages are also more likely to be early palm oil adopters conditional on both suitability and comparative advantage relative to rice, implying the program helped shape the spatial origins of Indonesia's post-decentralization palm oil boom, the dominant driver of deforestation in the region. Moreover, indigenous villages with transmigrant presence show evidence of negative spillover effects increasing in transmigrant share. Back-of-envelope valuation implies substantial damages, on the order of $17–$85 billion under alternative assumptions. This study contributes to the understanding of the long-term institutional drivers of tropical deforestation and provides a framework to study forest changes in both quantity and quality.

"Can Policy Reverse the Language Extinction Crisis? Evidence from Wales" [link] (RnR, Canadian Journal of Economics)

Abstract: Up to 90% of existing languages might disappear by 2100. Despite increasing funding and interventions, evidence on policy efficacy remains scarce. Using the 1990 introduction of Welsh-language education in Wales, I find that the policy significantly raised individual speaking likelihood and created approximately 64,287 speakers over twenty years, 60% above the counterfactual, at a cost of £3,957 per new speaker. Effects show diminishing returns and are stronger for females, in areas where Welsh was previously either widespread or nearly extinct, and where fewer parents speak Welsh. These results suggest education can substitute for home transmission and reverse language extinction trends. 

"Geographical Indications as a Development Tool: Quality Mapping and Conservation Incentives for Coffee" [link]

Abstract: Coffee is largely produced in developing countries for developed-country consumers, with known but ambiguous externalities on forests and food security. Shade-grown coffee, a forest-compatible production method, is common but often correlated with lower yields. This paper develops a land-use model of a coffee-producing economy with limited state capacity to study whether a Geographical Indication (GI) can serve as a second-best policy instrument. Because shade-grown coffee preserves forest, coffee generates a positive environmental externality that is valued by the social planner but not by individual farmers. I show that, under weak capacity, a GI-induced premium shifts private land allocation toward the socially preferred balance. A central implication is that a GI can generate gains only if eligibility is tied to credible quality. I provide an empirical framework to identify area and elevation boundaries in Timor-Leste, where coffee is fully shade-grown and the main source of income for most rural households. Using cupping scores from national coffee quality competitions, I identify villages and elevations consistently scoring above the specialty threshold as candidates for GI status. Elevation is found to be a strong predictor of quality, with farms above 945 meters having a better-than-even chance of producing specialty-grade coffee. A potential benefit analysis suggests that a coffee GI could generate substantial income gains while safeguarding forests. These findings show that GIs can act as a viable, relatively low-cost tool for sustainable rural development, provided they are underpinned by evidence-based quality mapping.

"Deep Sea Mining: Nonrenewable Resources Competition Under Uncertain Gains" (with Jorge Marco Renau) [link]

Abstract: Deep-sea mining is an emerging industry operating in a regulatory gray zone after the International Seabed Authority's deadline to finalize exploitation regulations lapsed in July 2023. Policymakers face a welfare problem in which mineral extraction generates rents that are comparatively easy to quantify, while the benefits of conserving deep-sea biodiversity—and the damages from disturbing fragile, largely unknown ecosystems—are subject to substantial uncertainty and irreversibility. This paper develops a two-period social planner model in which the planner chooses the share of the seafloor to protect prior to extraction. Welfare combines mineral rents, the value of biodiversity—including non-use, scientific, and commercial value—and a damage function that increases more than proportionally with the area open to mining. A key ecological constraint is a minimum protected share threshold required for ecosystem survival, under which biodiversity value collapses. The model delivers corner solutions (full protection or full openness) as well as an interior solution when protection exceeds the survival threshold; it also implies that "timid" conservation below the threshold is welfare-dominated. A numerical grid search over approximately two million parameter combinations shows that corner solutions dominate, and that the ecosystem survival threshold is the pivotal parameter governing efficient regulation and the value of scientific information. 

Works in Progress

"Let Me Think About It: Political Parties and Delays in FEMA Disaster Declarations" (with Pedro Vitale Simon)

"Deforestation and Air Pollution in the Indonesian Rainforest" (with Xinhui Sun)

"Estimating the WTP for Indigenous Language Conservation in the U.S." (with Amy Ando)