Intelligence and deforestation: International data

• The effect of intelligence on deforestation is investigated.
• We used OLS, instrumental variable and robust regression.
• Our results highlight the importance of cognitive abilities in forest management.

This paper investigates the effect of intelligence on deforestation rates, using data from 186 nations, over the period 1990–2010. Our findings provide novel evidence that human psychology, measured by nation-IQ, is negatively related with deforestation. This paper documents that, on average moving from a country with the lowest IQ score (61) to the one with highest (107.1) is associated with a 1.15 percentage point reduction in the rate of deforestation. The negative link between intelligence and deforestation remains robust when we account for the feedback from environment to intelligence.