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Three Essays on Environmental Issues in Brazil

Hales, Essence
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1447757351

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics.
This research develops three essays on environmental issues in Brazil. The first two essays look at the effects of rural credit and land-use change in Brazil. Previous economic models have come to the conclusion that rural credit loans extended to farmers increases deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon region by encouraging land expansion. The first essay is an analysis of deforestation in the Legal Amazon region. The paper uses municipality-level panel data to examine the effects of rural credit on deforestation while controlling for land constraints. The hypothesis is that farmers that are land constrained do not use rural credit to deforest. The land constraints that are considered include high population pressures, abundance of low quality soil, high areas of savannah, and low quality transportation networks. These constraints are included in a regression analyses to explain deforestation through the use of dummy variables and the interaction of the dummy variables with rural credit. Key findings suggest that credit in municipalities with high rural populations is associated with a decrease in deforestation. Credit in municipalities with low quality soil is associated with an increase in deforestation, suggesting the credit incentivizes the clearing of otherwise marginal land. No conclusions can be made about the effects of cerrado and poor transportation networks. The second paper is a countrywide analysis of biofuel crop acreage response to credit availability and availability risk using municipality-level panel data. In the first step, the model employs a participation model using a logit regression to describe the factors that determine whether or not a given municipality planted a particular crop. In the second step, an OLS-regression is used to describe crop acreage as a function of acreage in the previous time period, expected prices, and rural credit. The analysis compares the acreage response of sugarcane to that of beans, coffee, soybeans, rice, and wheat. The comparison is made within crops and across six regions, as well as, within regions and across crops. Findings suggest, sugarcane acreage is more responsive in the South to increases in rural credit in comparison to the Southeast, Amazon Interior, and Coastal Northeast. Similarly, response to rural credit availability risk is statistically different in the Amazon Interior from that of other regions. Also coffee is more responsive than sugarcane to credit in the Southern region The third paper looks at the effects of an environmental tax on the Brazilian economy. Using a Computable General Equilibrium model, the supply and prices of goods, labor, and services is determined. Consumer utility is also measured. The model simulates various tax schemes ranging form 1\% to 20\% implemented on the construction, industrial, and transportation sectors. Following the tax there is an increase in wages for construction workers, which is most likely due to an increase in the demand for fixed investments. Consumption of corn, sugarcane, beans, manioc and processed foods decrease. On the other hand coffee, rice and livestock consumption increase. Net utility within the economy increases.
Timothy Haab (Advisor)
Ian Sheldon (Committee Member)
Brent Sohngen (Committee Member)
123 p.
Agricultural Economics; Environmental Economics
environmental economics, development economics, agricultural economics, deforestation, land-use change, Brazil, applied economics

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Citations

  • Hales, E. (2015). Three Essays on Environmental Issues in Brazil [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1447757351

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hales, Essence. Three Essays on Environmental Issues in Brazil. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1447757351.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hales, Essence. "Three Essays on Environmental Issues in Brazil." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1447757351

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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