This book presents an economic perspective of deforestation in the Brazilan Amazon. The authors make use of an extensive collection of economic and ecological data spanning the whole of the Brazilian Amazon from 1970 to 1996 to examine the extent to which land clearing promotes economic activity and growth. They consider policies such as road building and subsidized credit to analyze their ecological and economic impact and examine whether the economic benefits of land clearing surpass the ecological costs and analyse the viability of extractivsm as an alternative to deforestation.