Pressler's indicator rate formula as a guide for forest management

In this paper, it is shown that Pressler's indicator rate formula is also the optimal condition for the determination of the optimal harvest age under the generalized Faustmann formula. In addition, a modern treatment of the quantity increment, quality increment, and price increment is presented. Pressler's indicator rate formula is then applied to determine the optimal harvest age in a dynamic world of unanticipated changes.     

Effects of litigation under the Endangered Species Act on forest firm values

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been a source of litigation and subject to court interpretation during the past several decades. In this study, event analysis was employed to examine the impact of six court decisions related to the ESA on the financial performance of U.S. forest products firms. The finding of abnormal returns revealed that all six events generated the expected positive or negative returns, and among them, four were statistically significant. Changes in systematic risk reflected the reaction of the stock market to the verdict announcements. Programs designed for habitat conservation can be implemented to compensate private landowners or firms for costs associated with protecting species on private forestlands.     

Optimal rotation with declining discount rate

In recent years it has been argued, from many perspectives, that the further into the future a value flow occurs, the lower is the appropriate discount rate for it. National governments are now beginning to authorise such declining discount rates. This viewpoint can be, and has been, formalised in various ways, and has been applied to evaluating forestry investments of given durations. When the optimal duration of investment is itself the issue, new problems arise. Lower discount rates make subsequent rotations longer than earlier ones, and for a given length more valuable than they would otherwise be. This affects the optimal length of earlier rotations, which in turn may affect the discount rate profile applicable to later ones. In the absence of analytical solutions for the optimal sequence of rotations, numerical protocols are needed. The results arising are mostly in accord with expectations. If the change of discount rate is due to expected changes of circumstance that are actually realised, then the optimal sequence of rotations will remain as initially determined. If, however, it is due merely to the particular time perspective of the present generation, rotations will be revised by future generations. This will lead to a sequence of rotations similar to that deemed optimal at the current short-term discount rate. The most important reductions in profitability caused by choosing the “wrong” discounting protocol arise from the “wrong” rate, rather than by using declining rates as such.     

Colonialism and conservation: Commercialisation of forests and decline of tribals in Madras Presidency, 1882–1947

This article attempts to analyse the colonial forest policy and its impact on the environment and tribals in Madras Presidency during the post-Forest Act period (1882–1947). During this period, the colonial regime has actively encouraged commercialisation of forest resources while several restrictions were clamped up on the tribals and other forest users. Here it is argued that the initiatives of the state towards conservation were primarily intended to curtail the access enjoyed by tribals and other forest users to facilitate commercial exploitation. Plunder of forest wealth continued unhindered in a systematic manner leading to denudation of vast stretches of green cover and a drastic decline in the living conditions of the tribals in Madras Presidency.     

Rewarding carbon sequestration in South-Western French forests: A costly operation?

The extension of rotation lengths in forests has been proposed as an option for increasing carbon storage and contributing to climate change mitigation. This paper presents the results of a case study conducted on forests located in the southwest of France. The aim of this research was to assess the cost effectiveness of a subsidy/tax system on carbon fluxes. First, it is shown that such a mechanism leads forest owners to extend rotation lengths. However, cost effectiveness analysis shows that: (1) marginal social costs are more expensive than the private marginal costs of carbon sequestration; (2) marginal costs are higher when carbon stocks are discounted, ranging from 170.1 €/tC to 719.8 €/tC with discounted carbon stocks; and from 38.8 €/tC to 78.4 €/tC with undiscounted carbon stocks; (3) marginal costs are in the range of measures of the social value of carbon for France; (4) marginal costs increase with timber prices and increase with discount rate.     

Further generalization of Faustmann's formula for stochastic interest rates

Markov decision process (MDP) models generalize Faustmann's formula by recognizing that future stand states, prices, and interest rates, are not known exactly. Buongiorno (Forest Science 47(4) 2001) presents a dynamic programming and a linear programming formulation of the MDP model with a fixed interest rate. Both formulations are generalized here to account for a stochastic interest rate. The objective function is the expected present value of returns over an infinite horizon. It gives, like Faustmann's formula, the value of the land and the eventual standing trees. The changes between stand states, prices, and interest rate, are represented by Markov chains. Faustmann's formula is a special case where the change from one state to another has 0 or 1 probability, and the interest rate is constant. The MDP model applies to any stand state, even- or uneven-aged, and the best decisions are tied uniquely to the current system state. An example shows the effects of recognizing variations in interest rate on the land expectation value, and the cost of ignoring them.     

Taxation, life-time uncertainty and non-industrial private forest-owner's decision-making

The nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owner's consumption and harvesting decisions are investigated under inheritance and capital income taxes using a two-period model. The impact of the forest-owner's age is introduced into the analysis through a parameter of perceived probability of surviving through a future period. This allows us to study the impacts of ageing on consumption and harvesting decisions as well as to see how the impact of taxes changes among different age groups of forest-owners. The results show that current consumption first decreases and then increases when moving from younger to older individuals regardless of whether non-timber assets are more or less heavily taxed through bequests than consumption. In general, we find that tax effects are dependent on the forest-owner's age. Age tends to intensify the increasing effect of the forest bequest tax on harvesting. The same is true with respect to the decreasing effect on harvesting of the inheritance tax imposed on non-forest assets. Furthermore, the forest-owner's age tends to intensify the effect on harvesting of the capital income tax imposed on forest assets, but diminishes the effect on harvesting of the capital income tax imposed on non-forest assets.     

Annual use, economic life and residual value of cut-to-length harvesting machines

Recognizing the absence of up-to-date empirical data on the economic life, the annual use and the residual value of dedicated cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting machinery, the authors gathered a large database of second-hand machine sale offers containing over 1000 records, coming from Europe and North America. The statistical analysis of these data pointed at an economic life in the vicinity of 18,000 h for both harvesters and forwarders, which confirms previous assumptions. The average annual use for the machines in the database is 1424 and 1581 h year⁻¹, respectively for the harvesters and the forwarders. Nordic users achieve a higher annual use than central European users, and the difference is statistically significant. Nevertheless, the average annual use recorded for both groups falls below the levels commonly adopted in current estimates, which may therefore represent ideal reference figures rather than actual averages. Residual value is strongly related to machine age, and the authors calculated some simple functions for estimating it. The study points at a better retention of the original value, compared to the figures reported in previous literature. At 5 years of age the harvesters and forwarders in the study keep respectively 38% and 44% of the new value. The information contained in the study is crucial to machine rate calculation, which has often been based on rule-of-thumb assumptions, in the absence of empirical data.