Journal Article

Annual Review Economics:

The Economics of Tropical Deforestation

Clare Balboni, Aaron Berman, Robin Burgess and Benjamin Olken

Two factors have elevated recent academic and policy interest in tropical deforestation: first, the realization that it is a major contributor to climate change; and second, a revolution in satellite-based measurement th...Read more...

Journal Article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia

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

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 ch...Read more...

Development Discussion Paper

The Political Impact of the Internet on US Presidential Elections

Valentino Larcinese and Luke Miner

What are the political consequences of the diffusion of broadband internet? We address this question by studying the 2008 US presidential election, the first political campaign where the internet played a key role. Drawi...Read more...

Development Discussion Paper

The Political Economy of Deforestation in the Tropics

Robin Burgess, Matthew Hansen, Benjamin Olken, Peter Potapov and Stefanie Sieber

Tropical deforestation accounts for almost one-…fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and threatens the world’s most diverse ecosystems. The prevalence of illegal forest extraction in the tropics suggests that unde...Read more...

Development Discussion Paper

Soldiers or Bureaucrats? Conflict and the Military’s Role in Policy-Making

Gabriel Leon

One of the most striking institutional features of many less developed countries is that their militaries are closely involved in policy-making, potentially having a large impact on economic outcomes. This paper examines...Read more...

Theoretical Economics Paper

The Political Economy of Housing Supply: Homeowners, Workers, and Voters

Francois Ortalo-Magne and Andrea Prat

Equilibrium of the housing market depends on a complex set of interactions between: (1) individual location decisions; (2) individual housing investment; (3) collective decisions on urban growth. We embed these three ele...Read more...

Development Economics Paper

Democracy and Education Spending: Has Africa's Move to Multiparty Elections Made a Difference to Policy?

David Stasavage

While it is generally recognized that electoral competition can have a major influence on public spending decisions, there has been little effort to consider whether the move to multiparty elections in African countries ...Read more...

Development Economics Paper

Minority Representation and Policy Choices: The Significance of Legislator Identity.

Rohini Pande

Disadvantaged groups tend also to constitute population minorities. One consequence of this is that the policies implemented by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect minority interests. A policy solut...Read more...

Development Economics Paper

Land Reform, Poverty Reduction and Growth: Evidence from India

Timothy Besley and Robin Burgess

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries th...Read more...

Theoretical Economics Paper

Read My Lips: The Political Economy of Information Transmission

Timothy Besley and Rohini Pande

The paper studies credible information transmission by governments. A group of heterogenous individuals have to make private investment and labour supply decisions while relying on the government for information about in...Read more...