Trade liberalisation and global-scale forest transition

In this paper, we develop a new theoretical model that explains the forest transition not at a local, but at a worldwide level, in a trade liberalisation scenario. Our model has economic geography foundations: transport costs affect the distribution of firms between countries. We also introduce a renewable natural resource used as an input by manufacturing firms. The results reproduce forest transition behaviour but at a global scale: a decrease in transport costs has a negative effect on the worldwide stock of the natural resource in the short-term, but in the long-term this initial effect is reversed as a consequence of industrial reorganisation between countries because of the change in transport costs.Forest transition; renewable resources; industrial location; geography; trade

Trade Reforms, Deforestation and Industrial Pollution in Developing Countries: One Size Does Not Fit All

Many developing countries possess comparative advantage both in natural resources and in labor-intensive industries, and experience both industrial pollution and natural resource degradation. We present a model that incorporates these stylized facts together with key spatial features and property rights failures typical of developing economies. We explore consequences of anticipated domestic and global trade policy and world price changes. Similar exogenous or policy shocks are seen to have contrasting effects, depending on initial economic structure, trade orientation and policy regime. Further, when there is more than one sectoral source of environmental damage, a policy or price change may have unexpected environmental and welfare results. Nevertheless, in many empirically important cases, reducing protection for capital intensive manufactures is likely to improve both income and environmental quality, a point that we illustrate by reference to some Asian case studies. These results stand in contrast to those obtained in much of the current analytical literature.

An empirical investigation of wood product information valued by young consumers

Recent media reports regarding wood products question the trustworthiness of wood origin declaration, the sustainability of production methods and the product quality. In light of this question, it becomes important to ensure consumer trust in wood and wood-based products. Current research indicates that providing product information enhances product trust and purchase intentions, while young consumers in particular seek detailed product information. However, it is necessary to determine which wood product information young consumers strongly value because providing a high amount leads to information overload. As information needs may vary between different consumer segments, the present work aims at identifying segments of young consumers and their preferred wood-product information. The importance of different wood product information items concerning the purchase decision was investigated with a German-language online survey (N = 185, age range 18–30). A cluster analysis revealed four consumer segments. Thereof, three segments (an environmentally oriented, an environmentally and quality oriented, and a quality oriented segment) valued the provision of wood product information. The preferred information types differed among the three segments. Overall, this paper provides insights into young consumers' preferences for wood product information and the consumer segments on which marketing should focus

Deforestation, Growth and Agglomeration Effects: Evidence From Agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon

The role of population growth and migration has been emphasized as a key variable to explain deforestation and land conversion in developing countries. In early studies a ‘Malthusian’ process is put forward to associate the growing demand for resources caused by larger populations in frontier areas. Recent empirical research has also focused on the role of population primarily as a measure for local demand and pressure over natural resources. The spatial distribution of human population and economic activities is remarkably uneven. At any geographical scale we find that different forms of agglomerations are pervasive. On the one hand, in central countries or regions, agglomeration is reflected in ‘large varieties of cities as shown by the stability of urban hierarchy within most countries’. On the other, less developed regions faces a dynamic process where new agglomerations form and develop as a result of frontier expansion. The recent literature on spatial economics has emphasized the role of agglomeration and clustering of economic activities as fundamental causes of an enhanced level of local economic performance, creating externalities that cause firms to grow faster and larger than they otherwise would do. However, very little has been done to examine the presence of agglomeration economies on economic performance of agricultural activities. The Brazilian Amazon is perhaps one of the most interesting regions for analysing eventual relationships between agglomeration economies, economic growth and deforestation. In this paper we empirically examine whether an initial level of agglomeration impacts the subsequent economic growth and deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon. We also test whether congestion effects at the higher levels of agglomeration limit these impacts by a non-linear relationship. The regression estimates indicate that there is a significant non-linear association between the initial intensity of agglomeration with both growth and land conversion in subsequent periods. We also find evidence of other factors associated with growth and land conversion.

Stream Fusion, to Completeness

Stream processing is mainstream (again): Widely-used stream libraries are now available for virtually all modern OO and functional languages, from Java to C# to Scala to OCaml to Haskell. Yet expressivity and performance are still lacking. For instance, the popular, well-optimized Java 8 streams do not support the zip operator and are still an order of magnitude slower than hand-written loops. We present the first approach that represents the full generality of stream processing and eliminates overheads, via the use of staging. It is based on an unusually rich semantic model of stream interaction. We support any combination of zipping, nesting (or flat-mapping), sub-ranging, filtering, mapping-of finite or infinite streams. Our model captures idiosyncrasies that a programmer uses in optimizing stream pipelines, such as rate differences and the choice of a "for" vs. "while" loops. Our approach delivers hand-written-like code, but automatically. It explicitly avoids the reliance on black-box optimizers and sufficiently-smart compilers, offering highest, guaranteed and portable performance. Our approach relies on high-level concepts that are then readily mapped into an implementation. Accordingly, we have two distinct implementations: an OCaml stream library, staged via MetaOCaml, and a Scala library for the JVM, staged via LMS. In both cases, we derive libraries richer and simultaneously many tens of times faster than past work. We greatly exceed in performance the standard stream libraries available in Java, Scala and OCaml, including the well-optimized Java 8 streams

Modeling Linkages Between Climate Policy and Land Use: An Overview

Agriculture and forestry play an important role in emitting and storing greenhouse gases. For an efficient and cost-effective climate policy it is therefore important to explicitly include land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in economy-climate models. This paper gives an overview and assessment of existing approaches to include land use, land-use change, and forestry into climate-economy models or to link economy-climate models to land-use models.Climate Change, Climate Policy, Modeling, Land Use

AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF TROPICAL DEFORESTATION: GHANA

Deforestation is modeled in two stages, as an interaction of interlinked key sectors in the Ghanaian economy (including forest products exports, fuelwood energy consumption, cocoa production, and food crop production), which compete for forest landuse or forest products. The effects of the different first- and second-level causes of deforestation analyzed are discussed.Two-stage regression, elasticity of deforestation, forest policy/management, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C320, Q230,