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In most developing countries deforestation has reached alarming rates. In view of their relevancefor the local economy (e.g., as a source of foreign exchange earnings and supply of fuelwood), anadequate management of forest resources should be pursued. In these economies forestexploitation and land conversion have often been seen as a temporary solution to structuralproblems. In this way, however, the same problems are even aggravated in the long run. Thestudy first reviews recent explanations of tropical deforestation: a distinction is drawn betweenareas of substantial agreement on the one hand, and discordant results and interpretations on theother. In the main part of the analysis, based on cross-country data for the 1980s, regressionmodels incorporating different sets of determinants of deforestation are applied. Compared toprevious studies, the analysis tries to better account for the sequential timing of some of thesedeterminants. Different patterns are identified among country groups, according to specificfeatures of economic activities, macroeconomic and political environments, and climaticconditions.
