The economics of global timber markets. Final report

This paper develops a global timber market model which captures how timber supply reacts to future predicted increases in the demand for timber. Higher future demand is expected to increase prices, reflecting greater land scarcity. Investments in growing timber are also expected to increase, expanding output and tempering the price response. A greater reliance on plantations in productive regions is predicted to allow large areas of natural forest in low valued regions to remain largely intact. The quantitative results are sensitive to the rate demand increases, the cost of plantations, and access costs of natural forests