Determinants of Agricultural Fires: An Aggregative Games Approach

The effects of deforestation through land fires used by farmers (specially, smallholders) are twofold. From
the individual point of view, they prepare the land improving its fertility. On the other side, the aggregate
decision has a negative impact on air and water quality, degrading the environment, and this is reverted
as a negative impact of the productivity of the land. In this work we present an aggregative game
framework which includes those effects and allows us to analyze the impact of cost fires variations and
number of farmers. Finally, using data from Brazilian research institutes, we test the sign and the size of
the impacts of those determinants on the aggregate deforestation in Brazil for the period 2009 to 2018.