The Global Allocative Efficiency of Deforestation

This paper quantifies global inefficient and spatially misallocated agricultural deforestation: carbon emissions-intensive deforestation on land with low agricultural yields. I overcome the limitations of a reduced form descriptive analysis by incorporating spatial cost differences, agricultural trade, and cross-country non-agricultural productivity in a trade general equilibrium model to estimate how they contribute to misallocation. Against a benchmark case with a Pigouvian tax at a $190 per ton social cost of carbon, 97% of carbon emissions from deforestation since 1982 are inefficient. Strikingly, these emissions are produced by only 13% of global agricultural land. Preventing these emissions costs only 7% of status quo agricultural production, yielding welfare gains of $6.6 trillion since 1982. However, an equity-efficiency tradeoff results: the tax burden falls on the poorest landowners. Lastly, if countries with carbon pricing policy apply these prices to deforestation, they would deliver 5% of emissions reductions achieved under the Pigouvian benchmark.