Presenting an economic perspective of deforestation in the Brazilan Amazon, this study utilizes economic and ecological data from 1970 to 1996. It examines the extent to which land clearing promotes economic activity and growth and analyzes policies such as road building and subsidized credit. It explores whether the economic benefits of land clearing surpass the ecological costs and considers the viability of extractivism as an alternative to deforestation.

This book contains an extensive up-to-date overview of nonlinear time series models and their application to modelling economic relationships. It considers nonlinear models in stationary and nonstationary frameworks, and both parametric and nonparametric models are discussed. The book contains examples of nonlinear models in economic theory and presents the most common nonlinear time series models. Importantly, it shows the reader how to apply these models in practice. For this purpose, the building of various nonlinear models with its three stages of model building: specification, estimation...