Forestry and the forestry industry are facing major structural changes. On the production side, the development of processing technology has made the industrial use of wood possible in many new areas; at the same time, wood growing has reached its economic and institutional limits in some old forest areas. As a consequence, a major shift in the global pattern of the supply of wood raw material is taking place.

Over the long term, the consumption pattern of forest products is changing: for traditional products, some countries are reaching saturation level whilst in others a considerable increase in demand is anticipated, and technological innovations are changing the overall demand for different products. These issues pose problems that require a global analysis.

This book, based on the First North American Conference, includes many impressive state-of-the-art papers in terms of current knowledge and econometric models; it covers modelling the forest products industry with emphasis on international trade, and represents an important step in improving the ability to model forest management investment.

Part I introduces the Forest Sector Project of IIASA; Part II presents approaches to developing forest sector models; Part III emphasises some of the sub-problems in model development, specifically on the development of realistic long-term supply response estimation capabilities; Part IV covers approaches to modelling demand and international trade components. The librray has a hard copy.