Modelling Bi-lateral Forest Product Trade Flows: Experiencing Vertical and Horizontal Chain Optimization

Craig Johnston and Gerrit van Kooten

No 2014-04, Working Papers from University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group

Abstract: This paper serves to document the REPA Forest Trade Model – a global model of forest trade that consists of ten products across two horizontal layers in a vertical chain. The model includes 20 regions: Five Canadian regions (Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, Alberta, BC Interior and BC Coast), three U.S. regions (South, North and West), China, Japan, Rest of Asia, Chile, Rest of Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Rest of Europe, and the Rest of the World. The underlying economic theory upon which the model is built is discussed in detail; we demonstrate that changes in region-level forest management policies (e.g., related to harvests) and/or trade policies have a larger impact on income transfers among regions and agents than they have on global welfare. The objective function and constraints to the quadratic programming implementation of the model are developed, and the method used to calibrate the model to existing bilateral trade flows via positive mathematical programming is discussed. Finally, the data sources and actual data are provided, as are the corrections to shipping and handling costs needed to calibrate the model.

Keywords: Forest trade modeling; vertical chains; welfare measurement; mathematical programming; model calibration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D60 F17 Q23 Q27 Q42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.uvic.ca/~repa/publications/REPA%20worki ... kingPaper2014-04.pdf Final version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Modelling Bi-lateral Forest Product Trade Flows: Experiencing Vertical and Horizontal Chain Optimization (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rep:wpaper:2014-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by G.C. van Kooten ().