2006 Volume 5 Pages 127-141
As a result of timber imports including North American timber of the major species, the timber self-sufficiency rate in Japan is below 20%. Timber prices are depressed, and planted forests are being abandoned in the middle of the rotation without suitable silvicultural treatments, which means that the application of sustainable forest management becomes difficult. A rise in the supply of home-grown timber could, therefore, be closely linked to achieving sustainable forest management. We approached the feasibility of sustainable domestic forest management by examining the effects of North American timber imports on Japanese timber market using a demand/supply model. Among others, our estimates of the cross price elasticities of demand for Russian, New Zealand, and domestic timber for the price of North American timber, which has the largest share in the market, were 0.619, 2.603, 0.149, respectively. We also found that the 10 % increase of all of the housing starts, exchange rate and oil price in the US raised equilibrium consumption of domestic timber only by 1.0%.
