Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia
Name
pandp.20211005.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
505.61 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Balboni, Clare
Burgess, Robin
Heil, Anton
Old, Jonathan
Olken, Benjamin A
Date Issued
2021
Journal
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Balboni, Clare, Burgess, Robin, Heil, Anton, Old, Jonathan and Olken, Benjamin A. 2021. "Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia." American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 111.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper examines the link between electoral incentives and environmental degradation by exploiting a satellite dataset on 107,000 forest fires and 879 asynchronous district elections in Indonesia. Fires represent a cheap but illegal means of converting forested land to other uses, but they risk burning out of control and creating substantial negative environmental externalities. We find a significant electoral cycle in forest fires. Ignitions and area burned decline during election years but steeply increase in the year after. The results suggest that politicians may suppress this activity at times when it might particularly dent their electoral chances.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/PANDP.20211005
