Welfare Implications of Community Forest Plantations in Developing Countries: The Orissa Social Forestry Project
利用印度奥里萨的家庭和遥感数据，评估社区森林种植园通过减少采集时间带来的福利效应，发现其对不同劳动力类别的边际生产力有重要但程度不同的影响，并为许多家庭和村庄带来显著的福利改善。
Community forest plantations are a common intervention in developing countries. We use household and remote sensing data from Orissa, India, to estimate welfare effects of community forest plantations, in terms of the value of decreased collection times plantations afford users. A selection model, accounting for possible jointness in site location and productivity, is used to estimate collection production functions for different household labor categories in natural and community forests. Two measures of an opportunity cost of time are used to determine welfare effects of time saved due to community forests. We find access to community forests is important to marginal productivity of different labor categories, but to different degrees, highlighting the need to disaggregate household data when analyzing these interventions. We also find substantial welfare improvements from time savings for many households and villages.