I am a 5th-year PhD Candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I am interested in the economics of forest conservation and policy. I will be in the 2026-2027 job market.

Research

Working Papers

• Fire and Punishment: Enforcement incentives and strategic fire use in the Brazilian Amazon (Job Market Paper)

Incomplete monitoring of illegal behavior may cause violators to reoptimize their criminal activities. In this paper, I study how near-real-time satellite monitoring of illegal deforestation shifted deforestation-technology choice in the Brazilian Amazon. I argue that by detecting primarily mechanical clearings, the introduction of the DETER system favored a technological substitution towards the use of fire. Introduced in 2004, the first generation of the system detected mainly mechanical clearings and was designed to target on-the-ground enforcement actions against illegal deforestation. Critically, until the introduction of the new DETER generation in 2015, the system was virtually blind to fire scars. Hence, the system introduced an asymmetry in the detection of different deforestation technologies. Using cloud cover as an instrument for satellite-based detection, I find that municipalities under more intensive surveillance experienced a statistically significant substitution from mechanical to fire-based clearing. Using ERA5 cloud cover data, a reanalysis climate product, I demonstrate that I can distinguish cloud cover from smoke, assuring the validity of my instrumental variable approach. Using this IV approach, I find that a one-unit increase in the number of enforcement fines issued in a month, within a municipality, is associated with approximately 3.3 additional fire ignitions in the following month, consistent with my substitution hypothesis. This result holds across different fine-exposure windows. I find that the introduction of the fire-aware system in 2015 dampened this substitution effect. My findings help explain why forest fires have persisted despite Amazon’s deforestation decline starting in 2005.

• Impacts of Paraguay’s zero-deforestation law (with Kendra Walker, Atahualpa Ayala, and Robert Heilmayr)

Countries are increasingly banning deforestation in private lands. Although this is a seemingly beneficial policy for conservation, there is little evidence about the effectiveness of such bans. We study the impacts of Paraguay’s zero-deforestation policy, a pioneering zero-deforestation commitment. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach, we find that the policy had null impacts on deforestation. A combination of policy forbearance and poor enforcement capacity drove the lackluster conservation impacts.

• Unequal Health Impact of Gold Mining in the Brazilian Amazon (with Yifan (Flora) He, Jacqueline de Aguiar Barros, and Robert Heilmayr) Paper link

Small-scale and artisanal gold mining (ASGM) can degrade the environment and lead to a variety of negative health outcomes associated with mercury use and mosquito-borne diseases. Gold mining has been accelerating in the Brazilian Amazon in the past decade, raising concerns over its impact on population health, especially health of Indigenous peoples. Yet, no study has systematically documented the health impact of gold mining across the Brazilian Amazon, and causal evidence is lacking. In this study, we use an instrumental variable design with cluster LASSO variable selection to isolate the effect of gold mining on health. We find that gold mining increases malaria, dengue, and Zika prevalence among the general population. Gold mining negatively affect Indigenous populations in several indicators of newborn health, and the magnitude of impact increases with time. Mining has mixed impact on newborn health among the general population. Our results highlight the broad, long-lasting, and unequal health effects of gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. We provide key evidence to guide policy interventions in regulating gold mining and addressing its health impacts.

• Community Land-Use Consensus Shapes Forest Outcomes in Peru (with Mark Buntaine, Yifan (Flora) He, Stuart Hamilton, and Marco Millones)

Literature on the governance of common-pool resources (CPRs) predicts that clearly defined boundaries and community consensus on resource use rules will promote effective governance of natural resources. However, empirical evidence directly testing this hypothesis is scarce. We investigate how community-level consensus on territorial boundaries and spatial land use rules are associated with forest conservation and conversion using original survey and participatory mapping data from 70 Indigenous communities in the San Martín region of Peru. We conducted an innovative mapping exercise in which community participants independently mapped their understanding of permissible land uses across their territory. Our analysis of these maps reveals two key findings: (1) areas with higher consensus on forest conservation designation exhibit significantly lower deforestation rates, while (2) areas with stronger consensus on agricultural use face greater forest loss. Our findings highlight how consensus about the rules governing land use is strongly associated with forest outcomes. This finding suggests that interventions should be deployed to help communities achieve consensus about how to use communal lands.

Works in Progress

• Coca eradication and alternative development programs: evidence from Peru (with Mark Buntaine, Yifan (Flora) He, Stuart Hamilton, and Marco Millones)

Email: acostolapede@ucsb.edu