AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF ACTIVITY CHOICE, LABOR ALLOCATION, AND FOREST USE IN SOUTHERN MALAWI

Monica G. Fisher, Gerald Shively () and Steven T. Buccola

No 28616, Staff Papers from Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: In this paper we explore forest use and activity choice among low-income households in Malawi. Using data from three villages in southern Malawi we investigate factors related to forest use by jointly estimating four labor share equations for forest use, maize production, wage-work, and self-employment. This approach allows us to examine factors influencing competing and synergistic livelihood strategies simultaneously undertaken by households living at the forest margin. Results from constrained ML estimation indicate greater incentives to degrade forests where the returns to forest use are high. Factors that reduce pressure on forests include availability of low-cost fuel substitutes, tree planting on the farm, favorable returns to wage-work and opportunities in the self-employment sector. We find that wealth is inversely related to forest pressure.

Keywords: Resource/Energy; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/28616/files/sp02-01.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:puaesp:28616

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.28616

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Papers from Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().