Economics of Naturally Regenerating, Heterogeneous Forests

Olli Tahvonen

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2015, vol. 2, issue 2, 309 - 337

Abstract: An economic model for naturally regenerating, heterogeneous forests is specified to yield both clear-cuts and continuous cover forestry endogenously. The model includes nonconvexities and any number of state variables but is, in its simplest form, a one-state variable problem. Clear-cuts with various rotation lengths and continuous harvesting appear as locally optimal solutions. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the local and global optimality of these two forest management types are obtained. Discounting is found to increase rotation length and to favor continuous harvesting. Initial state may determine the optimality of continuous forest cover versus clear-cuts. The relative value of large trees is an important factor in the optimality of different solutions. Analytical results are demonstrated by an empirical application.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/681587 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/681587 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/681587

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().