Indonesian political economy of deforestation

"By combining detailed satellite imagery with data on competition between jurisdictions, elections and local resource rents we have shown that local political economy factors are critical to understanding the pattern of tropical deforestation in Indonesia, home to some of the largest tropical forest reserves in the world. We find that increases in the numbers of political jurisdictions are associated with increased deforestation. Illegal logging increases dramatically in the years leading up to local elections. And having access to rents from local oil and gas reserves dampens incentives to engage in illegal logging in the short but not the medium term."

Burgess, Hansen, Olken, Potapov, and Sieber (2011) The political economy of deforestation in the tropics NBER Working Paper 17417