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Institutional Constraints and Deforestation: An Application to Mexico
Author(s) -
Barbier Edward B.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1093/ei/40.3.508
Subject(s) - deforestation (computer science) , clearing , economics , agriculture , panel data , natural resource economics , agricultural land , state (computer science) , institutional analysis , agricultural economics , geography , econometrics , finance , archaeology , algorithm , computer science , programming language , social science , sociology
Following North (1990), this article hypothesizes that effective rural institutions may impose additional costs on tropical deforestation through agricultural conversion. This allows a formal agricultural household analysis of institutional constraints on deforestation and therefore a method of empirically testing whether there is any significant difference in the actual level of forest land conversion under institutional constraints compared to the level of conversion under pure open access. A dynamic panel analysis for agricultural planted area in Mexico at state level and over the 1960–85 period confirms that institutional constraints on land clearing affected deforestation during the pre‐NAFTA era.