Resource Economics for Foresters

Provided here is an economic background for making and understanding both public and private forest management decisions. Treating forestery as part of our changing economic system (while still recognizing its biological foundations), this book examines the economic problems that arise when managing forests and how to approach them intelligently. Whether public or private management, the analytic framework - an investment project approach - is applied to financial/economic problems and then goes on to deal with the broad range of social problems. Special attention is given to the non-market determined values - recreation, aesthetics, etc. New information on the structure of US wood products industries is provided as well as a treatment of the role of forests and foresters in foreign trade, particularly with respect to development in the Third World. The book also discusses estimating values for non-market products, consumer surplus and new approaches to public forest project analysis.