Protected or Postponed? The Dynamics of Deforestation in Protected and Non-Protected Areas (with Erik Katovich)
This project examines the effectiveness of forest protected areas in a dynamic setting. I investigate whether the establishment of protected areas (PA) in the Brazilian Amazon immediately accelerates deforestation in the neighborhood, and logging activities gradually shift back to the protected areas over time. The dynamic displacement effect is fundamentally attributed to the perception on trees in the Amazon as a nonrenewable resource. I build a dynamic optimization model showing that the lower marginal cost of logging in non-protected areas (NPA) at the beginning of intervention increases over time along with the rate of deforestation, and loggers start invading PAs when the marginal cost in NPA hits the one in PA. Using georeferenced data, I additionally test for the dynamic displacement effects of PAs and explore how the types of PAs, political stability, and accessibility to local markets play roles in the relationship between the policy intervention and deforestation.
Forest Protected Areas and Violence against Indigenous Peoples
Labor Income in Free Access, Private Ownership, and Informality (with Julien Daubanes, Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti, and Emmanuel Milet)
Child Marriage, Drought, and Decision to Marry: Evidence from Ethiopia (with Aneta Couzens)
Mitigating the Health Impact of a Famine: Evidence from the 1985 Ethiopian Emergency Food Aid (with Salvatore Di Falco)
Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 176 (2025)
[Article in VoxDev]