Do property rights promote investment but cause deforestation? Quasi-experimental evidence from Nicaragua
利用尼加拉瓜2001年农业普查数据，通过准实验方法发现产权显著增加了森林砍伐，可能机制是产权促进农业投资、提高生产率，从而增加了砍伐森林的回报。
Many policymakers argue that property rights decrease deforestation. Some theoretical papers also make this prediction, arguing that property rights decrease discount rates applied to a long-term investment in forestry. However, the effect is theoretically ambiguous. The paper takes a novel instrumental variables approach based on Nicaragua's agrarian reform to test for the effect, using a new dataset—Nicaragua's 2001 agricultural census. It finds that property rights significantly increase deforestation. The model, supported by the data, suggests a likely mechanism for this relationship: property rights increase investment, increasing agricultural productivity and therefore the returns to deforestation.