Is plantation agriculture good for the poor? Evidence from Indonesia's palm oil expansion

Ryan Edwards ()

Departmental Working Papers from The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics

Abstract: I study the poverty impacts of plantation-based agricultural growth, focusing on Indonesian palm oil. Using rich new administrative panel data, I exploit exogenous variation arising from Indonesia's unique institutions and the data's longitudinal features to identify causal effects. Increasing the palm oil share of land in a district by ten percentage points corresponds to a ten percent reduction in its poverty rate, and a narrowing of the poverty gap. Effects are similar across regions and at the province level. Oil palm expansion tends to be followed by a sustained boost to the value of agricultural output, manufacturing output, and district GDP.

Keywords: palm oil; cash crop; plantation; agriculture; poverty; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C26 I32 Q15 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pas:papers:2015-12

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