AEA Papers and Proceedings 111, pp.415-419, 2021

Clare Balboni, Robin Burgess, Anton Heil, Jonathan Old and Benjamin Olken

Published 1 May 2021

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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.