Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Development of the Brazilian Amazon
- 3 The municipal database
- 4 The sources and agents of deforestation
- 5 Alternatives to deforestation: extractivism
- 6 Modeling deforestation and development in the Brazilian Amazon
- 7 Carbon emissions
- 8 The costs and benefits of deforestation
- 9 Conclusions and recommendations
- Technical appendix
- References
- Index
6 - Modeling deforestation and development in the Brazilian Amazon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of acronyms and abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Development of the Brazilian Amazon
- 3 The municipal database
- 4 The sources and agents of deforestation
- 5 Alternatives to deforestation: extractivism
- 6 Modeling deforestation and development in the Brazilian Amazon
- 7 Carbon emissions
- 8 The costs and benefits of deforestation
- 9 Conclusions and recommendations
- Technical appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
[I]t is now time for those interested in deforestation to shift the direction of research away from descriptive accounts and a priori reasoning and toward the careful empirical analysis needed to document the relation-ships involved and to measure their magnitudes.
(Robert T. Deacon 1995)Previous studies
This chapter will describe our econometric model of land clearing and economic development in the Brazilian Amazon. First, however, we briefly review some of the methodological approaches that have been used in previous empirical studies of the topic and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each. These studies can be broadly categorized as cross-country studies, regional-level analyses (such as our own), Geographical Information System (GIS) studies, and micro-level studies. For a more in-depth discussion of alternative models of tropical deforestation, we refer readers to Barbier and Burgess (2001), who also provide an excellent bibliography of recent studies.
In principle, cross-country analyses permit investigations into the relationships between the rate of deforestation and macroeconomic and institutional factors such as economic growth, population growth, openness, trade policies, political regime, indebtedness, devaluation rates, inequality, education, inflation, etc. Many of these factors vary only at the national level, and thus can be analyzed only in a cross-country context. However, serious problems beset these models, including the poor quality of data and the heterogeneity between countries. Most of these analyses are based on FAO estimates of forest cover or forest loss.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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