Volume 148, July 2016, Pages 484–490
- Anastassia Obydenkovaa, b, ,
- Zafar Nazarovc, ,
- Raufhon Salahodjaevd, e, f, , ,
- a Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, United States
- b Center for Institutional Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
- c Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne, 2101 E Coliseum Blvd, Fort Wayne, IN 46805, United States
- d Department of Economics, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33620, United States
- e Global Intelligence for Development Research and Analytics (GIDRA), Colibri Law Firm, 32 Shevchenko Str. 100060, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
- f Department of Economics, Westminster International University in Tashkent, 12 Istiqbol St., Tashkent 100047, Uzbekistan
- Received 18 January 2016, Revised 18 March 2016, Accepted 30 March 2016, Available online 2 May 2016
Highlights
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- We documented that intelligence has negative effect on deforestation.
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- We found that intelligence moderates the effect of democracy on deforestation.
- •
- We documented that democracy has inverted u-shaped link with deforestation.
- •
- Intelligence offsets negative effect of democracy on deforestation in weak democracies.
Abstract
This
article examines the interconnection between national intelligence,
political institutions, and the mismanagement of public resources
(deforestations). The paper examines the reasons for deforestation and
investigates the factors accountable for it. The analysis builds on
authors-compiled cross-national dataset on 185 countries over the time
period of twenty years, from 1990 to 2010. We find that, first, nation’s
intelligence reduces significantly the level of deforestation in a
state. Moreover, the nations’ IQ seems to play an offsetting role in the
natural resource conservation (forest management) in the countries with
weak democratic institutions. The analysis also discovered the presence
of the U-shaped relationship between democracy and deforestation.
Intelligence sheds more light on this interconnection and explains the
results. Our results are robust to various sample selection strategies
and model specifications. The main implication from our study is that
intelligence not only shapes formal rules and informal regulations such
as social trust, norms and traditions but also it has the ability to
reverse the paradoxical process known as “resource curse.” The study
contributes to better understanding of reasons of deforestation and shed
light on the debated impact of political regime on forest management.
Keywords
- Intelligence;
- Democracy;
- Institutions;
- Deforestation;
- Cross-country analysis
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
