Conservation and Economic Geography in the Amazon Rainforest and Other Essays on Development Economics

Tsuda, Shunsuke

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Year:: 2023
Contributor:: Tsuda, Shunsuke (creator); Foster, Andrew (Advisor); Turner, Matthew (Reader); Bjorkegren, Daniel (Reader); Brown University. Department of Economics (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Development economics; Political Economy; Environmental economics; Economic geography; Conservation of natural resources
Extent:: xvi, 316 p.

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Abstract:: This dissertation studies economic geography, environment, and political economy issues in developing countries. Chapter 1 studies the conservation of tropical forests. To derive policies that balance human and ecological well-being, we estimate a multi-sector spatial model that formalizes human-nature interactions using high-resolution georeferenced data from roadless river basins in the Peruvian Amazon and plausibly exogenous variation in the structure of river networks. The estimated agglomeration externality in agricultural production outweighs dispersion forces in access to land, implying that higher concentration leads to higher productivity with less deforestation per farmer. We also find a strong congestion externality with spatial spillovers in natural resource extraction. The agglomeration externality, primarily driven by economies of scale in transport technology and agricultural intensification, generates large welfare and forest cover gains but leads to natural resource depletion through general equilibrium effects. Counterfactuals demonstrate that combining well-targeted protection policies and transport infrastructure can simultaneously achieve higher welfare, lower deforestation, and less natural resource depletion. Chapter 2 uncovers the evolution of cities and Islamist insurgencies, in the process of the reversal of fortune over the centuries. In West Africa, water access in ancient periods predicts the locations of the core cities of the trans-Saharan caravan routes founded up to the 1800s, when historical Islamic states played significant economic roles. Employing an instrumental variable strategy, we show that these landlocked pre-colonial core cities, which contracted after European colonization along with the constant shrinking of water sources, have today been replaced by battlefields for jihadist organizations. We argue that the power relations between Islamic states and the European military during the colonial era shaped the persistence of jihadist ideology as a legacy of colonization. Chapter 3 shows that refugee inflows cause market-specific gains and losses for host farmers by combining a canonical agricultural household model, the natural experimental setting of mass refugee inflows into Tanzania in the early 1990s, and longitudinal panel data from the host economy. The refugee inflows have increased the surplus farm labor. They have also enhanced the crop marketization of subsistence farmers and the impact of hosting refugees lasts long even after refugees have left camps.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2023

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Tsuda, Shunsuke, "Conservation and Economic Geography in the Amazon Rainforest and Other Essays on Development Economics" (2023). Economics Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:mb6tpnnt/

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Economics Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Economics department.
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