IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jaerec/doi10.1086-742115.html

Electricity, Agricultural Productivity, and Deforestation: Evidence from Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Dimitri Szerman
  • Juliano Assunção
  • Molly Lipscomb
  • Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Abstract

We examine the impact of improved access to electricity on deforestation through the incentives it creates for farms to switch from cattle grazing to croplands. We generate a model that elucidates the conditions under which increases in agricultural productivity can increase the incentives to intensify rather than expand land use and examine the predictions of that model using county-level data from five waves of the Brazilian Census of Agriculture and satellite-based measures of land use. We estimate the impact of rural electrification in Brazil from 1960 to 2000 and the resulting increases in agricultural productivity. We show that locations suitable for hydropower generation experienced improvements in crop yields incentivizing credit-constrained farmers to shift away from land-intensive cattle grazing and into cropping. As a result, agricultural land use declined, more native vegetation was protected, and these effects persist 25 years later in both census and satellite data.

Suggested Citation

  • Dimitri Szerman & Juliano Assunção & Molly Lipscomb & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, 2026. "Electricity, Agricultural Productivity, and Deforestation: Evidence from Brazil," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(6), pages 1615-1656.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/742115
    DOI: 10.1086/742115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/742115
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/742115
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/742115?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/742115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JAERE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.