Pascale COMBES-MOTEL

Abstract The year 2019 marked an unprecedented step in violence in Burkina Faso. Before 2018, attacks targeted central government officials and expatriates. In 2019, the victims of sexual assaults, attacks, abductions or forced disappearances and assassinations were mostly local civilians. The surge in these violent attacks against civilians generates population movements. As of 2023, internally displaced people represent about 10% of the total population in the country. Several observers point to the youth of the attackers. This study investigates the motives that could drive young people to resort to violence in the country. It aims to highlight youth resentment's effect on violence against civilians in the country as of 2019. It takes advantage of one of the latest nationwide United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)-sponsored surveys conducted in Burkina Faso before some parts of the country became inaccessible because of attacks. Among other information, this survey collected data on youth resentment towards the ability of their kinship to fulfil their needs in 2018, namely before the shift in violence against civilians. We merge this survey into an original dataset that gathers data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), mining data from the MINEX project and distance data computed using Burkina Faso's roads information. The results of an event count model show that youth resentment matters in understanding the occurrence of conflicts. Moreover, the presence of mining companies, the remoteness of infrastructures, ethnic diversity and polarisation also significantly affect violence against civilians.

We econometrically assess how elections affect environmental performance, namely climate policy, using a sample of 76 democratic countries from 1990 to 2014. Three key results emerge from our system-GMM estimations. First, CO2 emissions increase in election years, suggesting that incumbents engage in fiscal manipulation through the composition of public spending rather than its level. Second, the effect has weakened over recent years and is present only in established democracies. Third, higher freedom of the press and high income that can proxy high environmental preferences from citizens reduce the size of this trade-off between pork-barrel spending and the public good, namely environmental quality. Deteriorating environmental quality can bring electoral benefits to politicians.

Cet article évalue l’impact des transferts des migrants et de la variabilité climatique sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages au Burkina Faso. Il s’appuie sur une base de données originale construite à partir de l’enquête 2009 de la Banque mondiale sur les migrations et les transferts. Une analyse en composantes principales permet d’élaborer un indice de sécurité alimentaire. L’indice standardisé de précipitation et d’évapotranspiration (SPEI) caractérise la situation climatique dans les différenes régions. Les résultats économétriques corroborent l’effet négatif de la détérioration des conditions climatiques sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages. En revanche, les transferts de fonds renforcent la sécurité alimentaire et atténuent l’effet négatif du SPEI sur la sécurité alimentaire. Ces résultats sont robustes à un biais d’endogénéité potentiel des transferts en utilisant la distance au chemin de fer des ménages et l’éducation des migrants comme instruments.

This literature review covers recent works dealing with the ultimate causes of economic development. The article first considers the driving role of the rules of the social game. Then the focus shifts to the role of historical circumstances. Finally, we seek to understand how geography can influence development paths. These studies are multidisciplinary and use new databases. The results should not imply that there is a cultural, historical or geographical determinism. That is, historical contingencies and economic policy decisions can foster lasting changes in development trajectories.

This paper investigates the relationship between public debt and environmental debt—reflecting CO carbon concentration. First, using an endogenous growth model in which pollution abatement spending can be financed by public debt, we show that public debt and environmental debt are complementary in the long run and usually substitutes in the short run. Second, these predictions are empirically confirmed: in particular, a 1% increase in the public debt ratio leads to an increase of 0.74% in cumulative CO per capita in the long run. Our findings emphasize the difficulty of defining policies that jointly serve both the economic (fiscal) and the environmental goals, due to the short- and long-run conflicting environmental effects of policies that either reduce or do not constrain public debt.

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Rare earth element extraction induces environmental damages and the balance problem. In this article, we show that recycling can challenge both problems in a two-period framework. We also find other results depending on the amount of scrap that can be recycled. If the recycling activity is not limited by available scrap, it does not change extraction in the first period. Environmental taxes on extracted quantities reduce extraction and favor recycling. But if the recycling is limited, the extractor reduces extraction in period one, adopting a foreclosure strategy, and environmental taxes can decrease recycling. In all cases, environmental taxes are never equal to the marginal damage from pollution, in order to take into account the recycling effect.

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In this paper, we explore the role of biofuel production on deforestation in low- and middle-income countries. Since the 2000s, biofuel production has been rapidly developing to address issues of economic development, energy poverty and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the sustainability of biofuels is being challenged, particularly at the environmental level, due to their impact on deforestation and the GHG emissions they can generate as a result of land-use changes. In order to isolate the impact of bioethanol and biodiesel production among classic determinants of deforestation, we used a fixed effects panel model of 112 low- and middle-income countries between 2001 and 2012. Firstly, we found a positive relationship between bioethanol production and deforestation in these countries, among which we highlighted the specificity of Upper-Middle-Income Countries (UMICs). An acceleration of incentives for the production of biofuels from 2006 onwards enabled us to highlight higher marginal impacts for the production of bioethanol in the case of low- and middle-income countries and UMICs. Secondly, for low- and middle-income countries, these results are not significant before 2006. Thirdly, biodiesel production appears to have an impact on deforestation before 2006 on both subsamples. These last two results seem surprising and could be related to the role of biofuel production technologies and the crop yields used in their production.

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Improving access to man-made capital through domestic credit and public spending is a step towards development. Developing countries rely also on natural capital, which may generate possible conflicts between environment and development targets. Taking the case of land-use and deforestation, this paper revisits the links between man-made and natural capital. Relying on a model of income maximization, we theoretically assess how better access to man-made capital through public spending and credit, influences forest cover loss. Econometric investigations, over the period 2001–2012, show that forest cover loss is positively influenced by credit and public spending. A better access to capital is thus detrimental to the forest. This can be interpreted as a Tinbergen rule : the development objective of facilitating access to man-made capital cannot be tackled without facing the objective of environmental protection.

Using a remotely sensed pixel data set, we develop a multilevel model and propensity scoreweighting with multilevel data to assess the impact of protected areas on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. These techniques allow taking into account location bias, contextual bias and the dependence of spatial units. Our results show that the hierarchical structure of the database matters and should be considered in the assessment of protected areas effectiveness. Our results also suggest that protected areas have slowed down deforestation between 2005 and 2009, whatever the type of governance. The effectiveness of protected areas differs according to socioeconomic and environmental variables measured at municipal level. For instance, indigenous protected areas are found to be marginally more efficient than sustainable use areas and integral use areas. Protected Areas that were more recently implemented are also found to avoid more deforestation than older ones. This corroborates the idea that recently created protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon have a greater agricultural potential.

Cet article propose un survol de la théorie des biens communs. La notion de bien commun et la possible surexploitation de ce type de ressource sont tout d’abord exposées. Ensuite, plusieurs illustrations sont apportées telles que le réchauffement climatique, la déforestation, la congestion urbaine et le déficit budgétaire. À chaque fois, les moyens d’éviter la tragédie des communs sont présentés. Il s’avère que dans chacun des cas, ce sont essentiellement des solutions étatiques qui sont privilégiées, contrairement à des arrangements institutionnels ou des solutions de marché.

This article provides new evidence on the effect of a difference in climate policy between trading partners on their bilateral trade flow for a sample of developed and developing countries over the 1980-2010 period. It innovates in two aspects. First, while previous studies have used partial measures of climate regulation, we estimate a measure of performance of a country’s domestic efforts for climate mitigation. This measure is the difference between observed CO2 emissions levels and “structural” emissions, i.e. the emissions predicted by the determinants of environmental degradation as identified and modelled in the literature. Second, the effect of these efforts on bilateral trade flows is assessed using a gravity model. A difference in domestic efforts between trading partners has no effect on aggregate trade flows. Put differently, weak domestic efforts do not imply comparative advantage. In addition, similarities in domestic efforts, whether they are lax or stringent, are not shown to affect trade flows. These results are not influenced by the goods’ characteristics (manufactured goods or raw materials) and are robust for different estimators.

While mitigation efforts in developed and emerging economies are necessary in order to meet ambitious climate targets, the international community strives to explore strategies to help the most vulnerable populations to cope with the short-term and long-term impacts of climate change. In the perspective of the 21st COP of the UNFCCC (Paris, December 2015), this Special Issue on ‘Climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing and transition countries’ addresses two complementary topical issues. On the one hand, migration – international and internal – and remittances are analyzed as adaptation strategies for vulnerable households and individuals. On the other hand, climate policies in emerging economies are examined in light of their distributional impacts for households and of the strategic issues they may raise. This special issue introduces five papers with a diversity of approaches, e.g., game theory, econometric modeling and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets. Consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990–2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

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Although widely studied, deforestation remains a common research topic. The relationship between economic development and deforestation is still in question. This paper presents a meta-analysis of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) studies for deforestation. Using 69 studies, offering 547 estimations, we shed light on why EKC results differ. We investigate the incidence of choices made by authors (such as econometric strategy, measure of deforestation, geographical area, and presence of control variables) on the probability of finding an EKC. After a phase of work corroborating the EKC, we find a turning point after the year 2001. Building on our results, we conclude that the EKC story will not fade until theoretical alternatives are provided.

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This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988–2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures.

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism, still in discussion, would be in charge of distilling the right incentives and promoting the right policies for fostering forest conservation. The estimation of reduced emissions induced by the mechanism has been raised as an issue, either for issuing the proper amount of carbon credits or for providing appropriate compensations of foregone revenues and other costs to host countries. This estimation would be based on the gap between observed deforestation and a counterfactual value. Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-asusual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to obvious political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far to determine the counterfactual value. In other words proposals focused on a results-based approach, the relevance of which is questionable because estimations of avoided deforestation are hardly reliable. With this approach, issuance of carbon credits and distribution of financial compensations could threaten respectively environmental integrity of the scheme and equity outcomes. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking distribution of carbon finance to real efforts (opposed to “results”) that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide strong incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is partly due to structural factors, and to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate/underlying causes, or economic/institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach.

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Dans cet article, nous examinons les conséquences de l'insécurité foncière sur la croissance économique au Brésil à partir d'un modèle dynamique d'une économie comportant un secteur agricole et un secteur manufacturier. La terre est à la fois un facteur de production fixe et spécifique au secteur agricole et un support d'épargne alternatif au capital employé dans le secteur manufacturier. L'arbitrage entre la détention de capital ou de terre dépend de coûts de transaction spécifiques à l'actif foncier, qui résultent de l'insécurité foncière. L'insécurité foncière entraîne une baisse du prix de la terre et une modification de la composition de l'épargne favorable au capital. Le modèle permet donc d'établir deux restrictions : un effet négatif de l'insécurité foncière sur le prix de la terre et un effet positif sur la croissance. Ces deux restrictions sont testées sur des données de panel pour les 27 états de la fédération brésilienne. L'insécurité foncière est approchée par le nombre de squatters. Les résultats économétriques n'invalident pas le modèle.

We examine the consequences of land tenure insecurity on economic growth in Brazil. We use an overlapping generations model with two sectors: an agricultural sector and a manufacturing sector. Land is specific to the agricultural sector and capital goods are specific to the manufacturing sector. Moreover land is a fixed production factor. Saving takes the form of either land or capital goods purchases, and saving composition depends on transaction costs generated by land tenure insecurity. It is shown that land tenure insecurity implies a decrease in land prices and a reallocation of savings in favour of capital goods. Two econometric restrictions can be tested on a panel of the Brazilian federation states: land tenure insecurity has a negative impact on land prices and a positive one on economic growth. Land tenure insecurity is proxied by the number of squatters. These two restrictions are not rejected.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the land market failures and the economic growth in Brazil. We use an overlapping model including two sectors, agricultural and industrial. The land is both a specific factor for agriculture and an asset that can be substituted to the capital used in the industry. The trade-off between land and capital holding depends, among other factors, on the transaction costs on the land market. These costs result from land insecurity and generate a decrease in the land price that favours capital accumulation. Two restrictions follow from our model : land insecurity has a negative effect on land price, and a positive effect on economic growth. These two restrictions are tested on panel data for the 27 Brazilian states. The econometric results do not reject our hypothesis.

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LEO Working Paper 2024-09

DR LEO - Working paper 2022-10

Tanzania enjoys humongous forest cover, and many of its forests are protected. Nevertheless, households are highly reliant on biomass. This study uses three-wave panel data (2008-2013) from the Tanzania National Panel Survey to estimate the effectiveness of protected areas in modifying household cooking fuel choices. We adopt a linear probability model (LPM) while controlling for region and wave-fixed effects. The findings suggest that while protected areas reduce the probability that households would use firewood, the likelihood of use of charcoal is increased, signaling a possible rebound effect given that firewood and charcoal are close substitutes. Overall, protected areas were not effective in reducing traditional biomass consumption. Our results highlight that environmental conservation policies such as the implementation of protected areas can generate negative consequences, especially given that the current charcoal production in Tanzania remains unsustainable.

We investigate the impact of climate change on firms’ investment in research and development (R&D) in developing countries. The paper relies on two contrasting hypotheses. In the first hypothesis, we speculate an optimistic situation where climate change could induce firms to spend on R&D to both reduce their environmental impact and curb the effects of future climate shocks. In the second hypothesis, we propose a pessimistic scenario where climate change would reduce firms’ incentives to invest in R&D. This second hypothesis would mainly be due to tighter conditions for access to finance from lenders, given the increased uncertainty about the firm’s future returns in the face of climate change. The empirical results support the second scenario, small firms being more severely affected. Furthermore, we examine the underlying mechanisms and identify financial access as the key channel through which climate change reduces R&D investment.

African countries are natural resource-rich. The continent has natural forests, homes of endemic biodiversity and various ores. This richness brings hope for sustainable and inclusive development in a continent whose population is rapidly growing. It also raises fears of environmental degradation. This article studies mining-driven deforestation using unique finescale data from 2001 to 2019. The dataset covering all Sub-Saharan African countries entails 2,207 polygons with an average size of about 12,000 square kilometres. 926 polygons were forested in 2001, of which 198 hosted industrial mines. A spatial autoregressive model allows taking dependence between deforestation decisions at the polygon level. The econometric results show that an additional mine increases deforestation by about 155 square kilometres. Protected areas mitigate deforestation poorly. One hundred square kilometres under protected areas enable only a 9.7 square kilometres reduction in forest loss. More than doubling protected areas would be necessary to offset mining-driven forest loss. Protected areas cannot alone mitigate the adverse effects of mining on forest loss and other environmental consequences. Moreover, the effectiveness of protected areas is not uniform across space: it vanishes in highly conflicted regions.

The paper aims to highlight the impact of youth resentment on violent conflicts in Burkina Faso. This work takes advantage of one of the latest nationwide UNICEF-sponsored surveys conducted in Burkina Faso before some parts of the country became inaccessible because of attacks. Among other information, this survey collected data on youth resentment towards the ability of their household to fulfill their needs. This resentment is closely related to perceived relative deprivation. We merge this survey into an original dataset that gathers data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), mining data from the MINEX project, and distances data computed using Burkina Faso’s roads information. The results of an event count model show that youth resentment explains the occurrence of conflicts. Moreover, the presence of mining companies, the remoteness from infrastructures, ethnic diversity, and polarization also significantly affect violence against civilians.

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We empirically explore how elections impact climate change policy and environmental degradation, using a sample of 76 democratic countries over the period 1990‐2014. Three key results emerge from our system‐GMM estimations. First, election years are characterized by an increase in C02 emissions, even though the effect weakens over the recent years. Second, this effect is present only in established democracies, where incumbents engage in fiscal manipulation through the composition of public spending rather than its level. Third, higher freedom of the press and high environmental preferences from citizens reduce the size of this trade‐off between pork barrel spending and the public good, namely environment quality.

This paper assesses the impact of remittances and climate variability on the food security of households in Burkina Faso. It draws from the World Bank 2010 survey on migration and remittances in Burkina Faso and uses a database from Burkina Faso’s Department of Meteorology regarding rainfall recorded in the ten weather stations throughout the country between 2001 and 2010. We build a food security index using principal component analysis that encompasses the accessibility and utilization dimensions of the concept. We also compute an inter-annual rainfall index and the latter is found to have a negative impact on food security. After controlling for potential endogeneity issues using distance variables and migrant characteristics as instruments, remittances are found to enhance food security. Results are robust to alternative measures of food security and alternative calculations of rainfall variability. The paper also highlights that remittances dampen the negative effect of rainfall variability on food security.

The article explores the relationship between public debt and environmental debt. The latter is defined as the difference between the "virgin state" which is the maximum stock of environmental quality that can be kept intact with natural regenerations and the current quality of the environment. A theoretical model of endogenous growth is built. We show that there is a unique well-determined balanced-growth path. The public debt and the environmental debt are substitute in the short-run but complementary in the long-run. Indeed, budget deficit provides additional resources to finance pollution abatement spending, but generate also unproductive expenditures (the debt burden). This hypothesis is tested on a sample of 22 countries for the period 1990-2011. The environmental debt is measured by the cumulative CO2 emissions per capita. We use panel time-series estimators which allow for heterogeneity in the slope coefficients between countries. It appears mainly that, in the long term, an increase of 100% in public debt ratio leads to an increase of 74% in cumulative CO2 per capita. In addition, this positive long-run relationship is still present at the country and the sub-sample level, despite some differences in the short-term dynamics.

Studies addressing the effectiveness of policies aiming at combatting deforestation have produced mixed results, showing no obvious and undebated correlations between a certain type of forest policy instrument and its success in preventing or deterring deforestation. Hence, why anti-deforestation policies succeed or not still remains unclear. This paper proposes a new reading grid of the effectiveness of anti-deforestation policies, by mapping the causal mechanisms at stake from its design to its objective of avoiding deforestation. 264 empirical evaluations are collected and reviewed in order to reveal the theory of change (ToC) that emerges from the current practice of forest policy evaluation. This mapping sheds light on the different causal steps necessary for anti-deforestation policies to be effective, and on the conditions at stake at the various stages of the causal chain, according to the existing literature. Doing so, it allows visualising the reasons for the success of anti-deforestation policies -or lack of, as per the literature corpus analysed. It also provides guidelines with regard to the elements of context to look at when designing and implementing such anti-deforestation policies. Finally, it exposes what is most researched by evaluators, as well as observes the main apparent evaluation blind spots. Our results highlight that the effectiveness of anti-deforestation policies is context-specific on political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and structural dimensions: The political willingness, the nature of available funding, the governance structure, the existence of forest-related traditions, the social and economic situation of local populations, and the nature and spatial scale of the deforestation drivers are elements that influence the success of the policy. They may play this role at different stages of the policy design and implementation: at decision-making stage, during its implementation, or when evaluating its results and outcomes. The majority of conditions reported from the literature concern the implementation phase, at the local level. In other words, according to evaluators, the success or failure of anti-deforestation policies mostly lies in its effective implementation in the field, i.e. in its ability to generate a social acceptance of and compliance to the policy rules. However, some studies also show that a successfully implemented policy does not avoid deforestation if the actual deforestation driver is not properly addressed, thus resulting in deforestation being displaced or unchanged. This underlines the importance of prior risk assessments and field studies to design an adapted policy instrument to combat deforestation.

Rare earth elements extraction induces pollution and the balance problem. In this article, we investigate how far recycling and environmental taxation challenge both questions. In a two-period framework, we assume a monopoly extractor in the first period that is in competition with one recycler in the second period. Our results depend on whether the recycling activity is bounded or not by extracted quantities. When recycling is not constrained, it does not change extraction in period 1 but has pro-competitive effects in period 2. The balance problem favors recycling in period 2 and reduces environmental damages in both periods. If recycling is limited, the extractor adopts a foreclosure strategy in the first period. The balance problem reduces extraction in both periods but also recycling. A second-best environmental taxation enables to reach the first-best outcome except in the second period of the bounded case. Environmental taxes have to be amended in order to take into account the recycling effect. They are never equal to the marginal damage.

This paper analyses the determinants of the optimal size of protected areas and what conducts neighboring effects. We investigate in which measure the infrastructure effect and the scarcity effect matter. We obtain several results. The size of protected area mainly depends on preferences toward forest, on the firms’ production costs and on the relation between municipalities. As far as total deforestation is concerned asymmetric regulation is better than no regulation. The infrastructure effect always leads to smaller protected areas than the scarcity effect. Under the infrastructure effect, centralized decisions do not always work in favor of larger protected areas than decentralized decisions contrary to the scarcity effect. We also show that decentralized decisions can reach the first best under the infrastructure effect without public intervention. A study of protected areas in the Brazilian Legal Amazônia corroborates our theoretical results.

Energy-use statistics in Tanzania reflect the country’s low level of industrialization and development. In 2016, only 16.9% of rural and 65.3% of urban inhabitants in mainland Tanzania were connected to some form of electricity. We use a nationally representative three-wave panel dataset (2008-2013) to contribute to the literature on household energy use decisions in Tanzania in the context of the stacking and energy ladder hypotheses. We firstly adopt a panel multinomial-logit approach to model the determinants of household cooking- and lighting-fuel choices. Secondly, we focus explicitly on energy stacking behaviour, proposing various ways of measuring what is inferred when stacking behaviour is thought of in the context of the energy transition and presenting household level correlates of energy stacking behaviour. Thirdly, since fuel uses have gender-differentiated impacts, we investigate women’s bargaining power in the decision-making process of household fuel choices. We find that whilst higher household incomes are strongly associated with a transition towards the adoption of more modern fuels, especially lighting fuels, this transition takes place in a context of significant fuel stacking. In Tanzania, government policy has been aimed mostly at connecting households to the electric grid. However, the public health, environmental and social benefits of access to modern energy sources are likely to be diminished in a context of significant fuel stacking. Lastly, we present evidence that the educational attainment of women in the household is an important aspect of household fuel choices.

In this article, we explore the role of biofuel production on deforestation in developing and emerging countries. Since the 2000s biofuel production has been rapidly developing to address issues of economic development, energy poverty and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the sustainability of biofuels is being challenged in recent research, particularly at the environmental level, due to their impact on deforestation and the GHG emissions they can generate as a result of land use changes. In order to isolate the impact of bioethanol and biodiesel production among classic determinants of deforestation, we use a fixed effects panel model on biofuel production in 112 developing and emerging countries between 2001 and 2012. We find a positive relationship between bioethanol production and deforestation in these countries, among which we highlight the specificity of Upper-Middle-Income Countries (UMICs). An acceleration of incentives for the production of biofuels, linked to a desire to strengthen energy security from 2006 onwards, enables us to highlight higher marginal impacts for the production of bioethanol in the case of developing countries and UMICs. However, these results are not significant before 2006 for developing countries, and biodiesel production appears to have an impact on deforestation before 2006 on both subsamples. These last two results seem surprising and could be related to the role of biofuel production technologies and the crop yields used in their production.

While the production of biofuels has expanded in recent years, findings in the literature on its impact on growth and development remain contradictory. This paper presents a meta-analysis of computable general equilibrium studies published between 2006 and 2014. Using 26 studies, we shed light on why their results differ. We investigate factors such as biofuel type, geographic area and the characteristics of models employed. Our results indicate that the outcomes of CGE simulations are sensitive to model parameters and also suggest heterogenous effects of biofuel expansion between developed / emerging countries and Sub-Saharan African countries. Our quantitative meta-analysis complements existing narrative surveys and confirms that results are sensitive to key hypotheses on essential parameters. Simulations on longer time periods and in multi-country studies lead to results that indicate higher impacts of biofuel expansion on growth and household income. Moreover, simulations with a shock in agricultural productivity indicate positive welfare gains, unlike simulations with a shock on land expansion. Lastly, we find that biodiesels lead to higher welfare gains than biofuels.

This paper analyzes deforestation leakages from natural rainforests to anthropized habitats following the creation of Protected Areas in Madagascar. A simple theoretical framework highlights that a conservation constraint does not necessarily create deforestation leakages on secondary forests. An original dataset is built combining fine scale vegetation cover images and spatialized census data over the period 2000 to 2012. Cover images allow us to distinguish a mosaic of landscapes. Multilevel panel regressions and matching techniques indicate a causal effect of Protected Areas on deforestation leakages. Though Protected Areas reduce deforestation in protected natural forests, forest clearing is mostly reported on other types of anthropized forests. Our results demonstrate the limitations of Porter-like mechanism in agricultural innovation. They also support the hypothesis of a conservation dilemma: protecting biodiversity may come at the expense of the welfare of locals who rely on local (provisioning) ecosystem services.

Using a remotely sensed pixel data set, we develop a multilevel model and propensity score weighting with multilevel data to assess the impact of protected areas on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. These techniques allow taking into account location bias, contextual bias and the dependence of spatial units. The results suggest that protected areas have slowed down deforestation between 2005 and 2009, whatever the type of governance. The results also evidence that protected and unprotected areas do not share the same location characteristics. In addition, the effectiveness of protected areas differs according to socioeconomic and environmental variables measured at municipal level.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets; consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990-2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

Protected areas are increasingly used as a tool to fight against deforestation. This paper presents new evidence on the spillover effects that occur in the decision to deforest and the creation of protected areas in local administrative entities in Brazilian Legal Amazon over the 2001-2011 period. We also highlight the interdependence between these two decisions. We proceed in two steps. First, we assumed that protected areas are created to stop the negative effects of deforestation on biodiversity. In order to control for the non-random location of protected areas, biodiversity indicators are used as excluded instruments. This model is estimated using a spatial model with instrumental variables. Second, a simultaneous system of spatially interrelated cross sectional equations is used to take into account the interdependence between the decision to deforest and the creation of protected areas. Our results show (i) that deforestation activities of neighboring municipalities are complements and that (ii) there is evidence of leakage in the sense that protected areas may shift deforestation to neighboring municipalities. The net effect of protected areas on deforestation remains however negative; it is moreover stable across two sub-periods. Our results confirm the important role of protected areas to curb deforestation and thereby biodiversity erosion. Moreover, they show that strategic interactions deserve attention in the effectiveness of conservation policies.

Improving access to capital through credit and public spendings is an important step toward development and poverty alleviation. At the same time, deforestation-related activities, like agricultural expansion, can be seen as relying on natural capital, through the depletion of forest resources and the use of land in an extensive way. It is then important to better understand how a better access to capital influences the use of land as a natural capital. This paper assesses the relationship between financial development, public spendings and deforestation. Are they substitute or complement? Our econometric analysis shows that deforestation is positively correlated to access to credit and public spendings, which gives some evidence that natural capital is a complement to credit and public spendings.

This paper contributes to the controversial literature on the relationship between environmental policies and international trade. It provides new evidence about the effect of a gap in environmental policies between trading partners on trade flow on a sample of developed and developing countries over the 1980-2010 period. The paper innovates on two aspects. First, while previous studies have used partial measures of environmental regulations (input-oriented or output-oriented indicators), an index of a country's environmental policy is computed. This index is calculated as the difference between observed pollution levels and "structural" pollution i.e. pollution predicted by determinants of environmental degradation as identified and modelled in the literature. This index is therefore a measure of "revealed" efforts made by countries aiming at downsizing environmental degradation. Second, the effect of these revealed environmental policies is assessed on bilateral trade flows in a gravity model. A particular attention is paid to similarities in environmental policies. Our results show that a gap in domestic efforts towards environmental protection between trading partners has no effect on exports. Moreover, the results do not appear to be conditional on the level of development of the countries trading nor on the characteristics of exported goods (manufactured goods and primary commodities).

Relationships between health and economic prosperity or economic growth are difficult to assess. The direction of the causality is often questioned and the subject of a vigorous debate. For some authors, diseases or poor health had contributed to poor growth performances especially in low-income countries. For other authors, the effect of health on growth is relatively small, even if one considers that human capital accumulation needs also health investments. It is argued in this paper that commonly used health indicators in macroeconomic studies (e. g. life expectancy, infant mortality or prevalence rates for specific diseases such as malaria or HIV/AIDS) imperfectly represent the global health status of population. Health is rather a complex notion and includes several dimensions which concern fatal (deaths) and non-fatal issues (prevalence and severity of cases) of illness. The reported effects of health on economic growth vary accordingly with health indicators and countries included in existing analyses. The purpose of the paper is to assess the effect of health on growth. The augmented Solow model is modified so as to account for human capital depreciation. It is argued that the latter is measured by the so-called disability-adjusted life year (DALY) that was proposed by the World Bank and the WHO in 1993. Income regressions are run on 129 countries over the 2000-2004's period, where the potential endogeneity of the health indicator is dealt for. The negative effect of poor health on development is not rejected thus reinforcing the importance of achieving MDGs.

Although widely studied, deforestation remains a topical and typical issue. The relationship between economic development and deforestation is still at stake. This paper presents a meta-analysis of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) studies for deforestation. Using 71 studies, offering 631 estimations, we shed light on why EKC results differ. We investigate the incidence of choices made by authors (econometric strategy, deforestation measure, temporal coverage, geographical area, measure of economic development...) on the probability of finding an EKC. After a phase of work corroborating the EKC, we find a turning point after the year 2001. Building on our results, we conclude that the EKC story will not fade until theoretical alternatives will be provided.

Relationships between health and economic prosperity or economic growth are difficult to assess. The direction of the causality is often questioned and the subject of a vigorous debate. For some authors, diseases or poor health had contributed to poor growth performances especially in low-income countries. For other authors, the effect of health on growth is relatively small, even if one considers that human capital accumulation needs also health investments. It is argued in this paper that commonly used health indicators in macroeconomic studies (e. g. life expectancy, infant mortality or prevalence rates for specific diseases such as malaria or HIV/AIDS) imperfectly represent the global health status of population. Health is rather a complex notion and includes several dimensions which concern fatal (deaths) and non-fatal issues (prevalence and severity of cases) of illness. The reported effects of health on economic growth vary accordingly with health indicators and countries included in existing analyses. The purpose of the paper is to assess the effect of health on growth, by using a global health indicator, the so-called disability-adjusted life year (DALY) that was proposed by the World Bank and the WHO in 1993. Growth convergence equations are run on 159 countries over the 1999-2004's period, where the potential endogeneity of the health indicator is dealt for. The negative effect of poor health on economic growth is not rejected thus reinforcing the importance of achieving MDGs.

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism is in charge of distilling the right incentives for fostering forest conservation with appropriate compensation of foregone revenues, which in turn is related to avoided deforestation (how many hectares of forests are saved). Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-as-usual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far. In other words, proposals have focused on a baseline (or cap)-and-trade approach, which relevance is questionable because resulting financial compensations are subject to unfairness if estimations of avoided deforestation are not reliable. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking compensations to real efforts that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide more efficient incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is due partly to structural factors, and partly to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate / underlying causes, or economic / institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach. In addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective, this approach guarantees fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period.

This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988-2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures.

This paper establishes a link between deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries. The latter exhibit rapid deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in credit booms and crunches episodes: data available on the last years show a coincidence between higher macroeconomic instability and deforestation increases. This paper provides a theoretical explanation and econometric investigations of this phenomenon. A key ingredient of the model is the existence of two sectors: a modern agricultural sector and a subsistence one, which are hypothesised to catch the basic features of Latin American agricultural sectors. Agricultural production relies on three production factors: land, capital and labour. Agents clear forested areas in order to increase agricultural lands. Interest rates movements have an effect on agricultural decisions and thus on deforestation since they induce factor movements between the agricultural sectors. It is shown that deforestation occurs in response to interest rates increases or decreases primarily because of the irreversible character of forest conversion. Econometric tests are conducted on the 1948-2005 period on an exhaustive sample of Latin American countries. The database on deforestation is a compilation of FAO censuses and several measures of credit cycles are calculated as well. The main output of the paper is to evidence a link between credit cycles and deforestation. The results are robust to the introduction of usual control variables in deforestation equations.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the detrimental impact of land tenure insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. It is related to recent controversies about the detrimental impact of land laws on deforestation, which seem to legitimize land encroachments. The latter is mainly the result of land tenure insecurity which is a key characteristic of this region and results from a long history of interactions between rural social unrest and land reforms or land laws. A simple model is developed where strategic interactions between farmers lead to excessive deforestation. One of the empirical implications of the model is a positive relationship between land tenure insecurity and the extent of deforestation. The latter is tested on data from a panel of Brazilian Amazon municipalities. The negative effect of land tenure insecurity proxied by the number of squatters on deforestation is not rejected when estimations are controlled for the possible endogeneity of squatters. One of the main policy implications is that ex post legalizations of settlements must be accompanied by the enforcement of environmental obligations.

The forest still covers an important share of land area in many developing countries and represents an important source of revenue for governments. Another major contribution to government revenues comes from printing money, namely the seigniorage. Building on a simple theoretical model where governments target inflation and aim at reducing deforestation while minimising a welfare loss function, we exhibit the potential substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Regressions run on a panel of developing countries show that there exists a non-negligible substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues, which is, as suggested by the theoretical model, even stronger if the endogenous character of seigniorage is taken into account. Adding variables suggested by the theoretical model as well as usual control variables in deforestation equations, do not alter the main result. As a consequence, disinflation policies as recommended by the IMF, may hasten deforestation. The model is extended to address this problem, which shows that international transfers dedicated to rainforest protection may upturn the positive correlation between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and give some additional support to REDD's advocates.

Relationships between health and economic prosperity or economic growth are difficult to assess. The direction of the causality is often questioned and the subject of a vigorous debate. For some authors, diseases or poor health had contributed to poor growth performances especially in low-income countries. For other authors, the effect of health on growth is relatively small, even if one considers that investments which could improve health should be done. It is argued in this paper that commonly used health indicators in macroeconomic studies (e. g. life expectancy, infant mortality or prevalence rates for specific diseases such as malaria or HIV/AIDS) imperfectly represent the global health status of population. Health is rather a complex notion and includes several dimensions which concern fatal (deaths) and non-fatal issues (prevalence and severity of cases) of illness. The reported effects of health on economic growth vary accordingly with health indicators and countries included in the analyses. The purpose of the paper is to assess the effect of a global health indicator on growth, the so-called disability-adjusted life year (DALY) that was proposed by the World Bank and the WHO in 1993. Growth convergence equations are run on 159 countries over the 1999-2004's period, where the potential endogeneity of the health indicator is dealt for. The negative effect of poor health on economic growth is not rejected thus reinforcing the importance of achieving MDGs.

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