Spatial Causality. An application to the Deforestation Process in Bolivia

  1. Aliaga, Xavier
  2. Herrera, Marcos
  3. Leguía, Daniel
  4. Mur Lacambra, Jesús
  5. Ruiz Marín, Manuel
  6. Villegas, Horacio
Revue:
Investigaciones Regionales = Journal of Regional Research

ISSN: 1695-7253 2340-2717

Année de publication: 2011

Titre de la publication: Contributions to spatial econometrics

Número: 21

Pages: 183-198

Type: Article

D'autres publications dans: Investigaciones Regionales = Journal of Regional Research

Résumé

This paper analyses the causes of deforestation for a representative set of Bolivian municipalities. The literature on environmental economics insists on the importance of physical and social factors. We focus on the last group of variables. Our objective is to identify causal mechanisms between these factors of risk and the problem of deforestation. To this end, we present a testing strategy for spatial causality, based on a sequence of Lagrange Multipliers. The results that we obtain for the Bolivian case confirm only partially the traditional view of the problem of deforestation. Indeed, we only find unequivocal signs of causality in relation to the structure of property rights.

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