Book Description

Provides the economic background for making and understanding both public and private forest management decisions. Treating forestry 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. Provides an analytic framework (an investment project approach) useful to both public and private management, and applies it to the financial and economic problems peculiar to forestry. Also covered are the broad range of social problems associated with forest management. Special attention is given to the non-market determined values--recreation, aesthetics, etc. New information on the structure of U.S. 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. Discusses estimating values for non-market products, consumer surplus, and new approaches to public forest project analysis.