Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia

This paper examines the link between electoral incentives and environmental degradation by exploiting a satellite dataset on 107,000 forest fires 879 asynchronous district elections in Indonesia. Fires represent cheap but illegal means of converting forested land to other uses, they risk burning out control creating substantial negative externalities. We find significant cycle fires. Ignitions area burned decline during election years steeply increase year after. The results suggest that politicians may suppress this activity at times when it might particularly dent their chances.