Political economy of the environment · Field lab
District heads in Indonesia sell logging permits into a shared wood market. Split a district or share out oil money, and watch how much forest gets cut.
A politician who might lose the next election gains little by saving forest for later, and a lot by handing it to voters now. Tighten or loosen this province's races and watch where the forest goes.
Built on Burgess, R., Hansen, M., Olken, B. A., Potapov, P. & Sieber, S. “The Political Economy of Deforestation in the Tropics.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127(4), 1707–1754 (2012).
Built on Sanford, L. “Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Evidence from Deforestation.” American Journal of Political Science 67(3), 748–763 (2023).
The gap between the solid line and each dashed line is how much that mechanism adds to or saves in clearing. Shaded years come after the paper's data ends.
The gap between the lines is the forest handed out in close races. It appears only in election years (2005 and 2010 for most districts, 2006 and 2011 for others).
Every district in the selected year. Over quota is the illegal share of its permit cutting. Click a row to select it; click a heading to sort.
| District | Formed | Cleared | Over quota | Market share | Oil & gas $/cap | Last margin | Next election |
|---|
The simulation is tuned to these published estimates. The numbers here are the paper's, not the model's.
Sanford's estimates are in percentage points of forest cover per year, across countries. The lab copies their shape (nothing on average, more as races tighten, none in consolidated democracies), not their size.
1. District heads sell logging permits. Since 1999 the district forest office has answered to the bupati, and no log moves without its permit. A permit beyond the legal quota is a bribe.
2. More districts means more sellers. Logs can't be exported raw, so each province is its own wood market. Split a district and there is one more seller: more wood is cut and prices fall.
3. Oil money raises the stakes. A head caught logging illegally loses office. Oil money makes office worth more, so heads cut less. After direct elections, oil money seems to attract heads who take both kinds of rent.
1. Forests are public goods; cleared land is a private one. A standing forest protects watersheds and stores carbon for everyone. Cleared land is farmland a politician can give to particular voters and take credit for.
2. Close races shorten horizons. A politician who may lose gets little from forest saved for later, and a lot from land handed out now. Before Kenya's first multiparty election in 1992, President Moi carved farms out of protected reserves. A senior Kenyan official put it this way: “If an election were held every year, there would be no forest left.”
3. Only where institutions are weak. Landslides don't trigger the trade, and consolidated democracies punish it. Sanford also cites an earlier version of Burgess et al. reporting “political logging cycles” in Indonesia.
Work through these using the controls above. Cite specific districts, years and numbers from the ledger and the charts.
Each year every district head chooses how much forest to open to loggers. Selling more earns more bribes but lowers the price for everyone. Cutting past the legal quota risks detection, and detection costs more the more oil money a head stands to lose.
Oil money is shared by the real rule: half to the district with the field, half split among the rest. Direct elections start in 2005 and repeat every five years.
Each map cell is 2,500 ha. The model is tuned to the paper's estimates, but the map and forest are illustrative.
Direct elections for district head start in 2005 and repeat every five years. A new district holds its first election three years after it is formed. Each election gets its own winning margin, drawn around the typical margin you set.
In an election year, a race decided by under 20 points makes the head hand out a share of the district's remaining forest to pivotal voters as farmland. The share grows as the margin nears zero. Consolidated institutions switch this off.
The land is given away, not sold, so it never enters the wood market. The permit market underneath runs exactly as on the Districts & oil tab. Handed-out land comes mostly from Conversion and Production forest near settlements, but protected forest is not spared: Kenya's excisions came out of reserves.