Despite growing policy interest in using tropical forests as carbon sinks, relevant evidence is sparse. To provide such evidence, our project advances and integrates two disciplinary analyses, and applies them for a case study of Costa Rica. First, we estimate how much C sequestration will be...

We review claims linking both payments for carbon and poverty to deforestation. We examine these effects empirically for Costa Rica during the late 20th century using an econometric approach that addresses the irreversibilities in deforestation. We find significant effects of the relative...

Prioritizing sites for conservation has been a central question for over a century. Much work studies large sparsely-populated landscapes to optimize habitat for the highest number (or value) of species for a set cost, given possible ecological interactions between the patches of conserved land....

In this paper, we use geospatial data and difference-in-differences models to identify the deforestation effects, during 2000-2013, of the leading forest policies in the Peruvian Amazon: i) logging concessions, ii) third-party certification of concessions, and iii) Protected Areas (PAs). We find...

Concessions that grant logging rights to firms support economic development, based on forest resources. Eco-certifications place sustainability restrictions on the operation of such logging concessions. Using a spatially detailed panel and new DID estimators, we estimate the 2002-2018 impacts on...