EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Rules and Exceptions: Regulatory Challenges to Private Tree Felling in Northern India

Pushpendra Rana and Ashwini Chhatre

World Development, 2016, vol. 77, issue C, 143-153

Abstract: Sale of trees from privately owned forest patches is an important source of income for smallholders in developing countries. These private stands are scattered across mixed-use landscapes that include valuable public forests, presenting monitoring and enforcement challenges for state agencies and unique opportunities for traders and farmers to circumvent regulations. We use spatial econometric models and matching methods to show how traders in northern India exploit gaps in regulatory policy, with potential for illegal and pre-mature harvesting of trees. Our findings suggest collusion among traders, large landowners, and local forest officials, especially at higher distances from the location of regulatory offices.

Keywords: private forests; regulation; smallholders; Himachal Pradesh; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1500203X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:77:y:2016:i:c:p:143-153

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.08.022

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).

 
Page updated 2024-10-17
Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:77:y:2016:i:c:p:143-153