This paper compares the Total Economic Value of standing Amazonian rain forest with the Net Present Value of alternative agricultural land uses. It is shown that, at the current level of deforestation, the potential benefits of deforestation are higher than the expected costs. As the level of...

Brazil has long ago removed most of the perverse government incentives that stimulated massive deforestation in the Amazon in the 70s and 80s, but one highly controversial policy remains: Road building. While data is now abundantly available due to the constant satellite surveillance of the...

Bolivia has significant potential to abate climate change by reducing deforestation. This opportunity presents economic and environmental tradeoffs. While these tradeoffs have been hotly debated, they have as yet been the subject of little quantitative analysis. We introduce the OSIRIS-Bolivia...