The purpose of this paper was to examine the advantage of the forest vehicles in yarding logs in Japan by econometric methods. First, the productivity of the Japanese logging industry were analyzed by being used the Cobb-Douglas production function with panel data focused on the difference between production technologies. The results showed that the cable yarding had decreasing returns to scale, the vehicle yarding had constant returns to scale, and yarding with light logging truck had decreasing returns to scale. These results were confirmed by the IPS panel unit root test and the Pedroni panel cointegration test for long term. Second, I calculated the amounts of minimum logging that the vehicle yarding was more profitable than the cable yarding with cost minimization. The empirical findings showed that the vehicle yarding had the costs advantage except a few production of Japanese cedar.

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Vietnam's forest tenure system has changed since 1994 owing to the continued forest loss: Protection and production forests, instead of being directly managed and used by the government, were allocated to individual households for management and development. Despite the new tenure policy, the new forest tenants in mountain regions-the most vulnerable group in the country-continued to extract forest resources and use forestland for growing crops. Subsequently, forest quality decreased. This study was conceptualized to determine the implementation of the policy in practice and the actual situation of utilization of forest resources and forestland among the forest tenants. A mountainous community in North Central Vietnam, where the new policy has been implemented, was chosen as case study. Both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were derived from a questionnaire survey of 84 randomly-selected households (30% of the community's total households). The study found that implementation of the new policy in the community was arbitrary, inconsistent, and unfair. Consequently, forest tenants did not find incentives to manage and develop the allocated forests. No any households were found to invest, protect, or work on forests as being expected by the policy. They continued to extract forest resources for human and livestock daily used, and use forestland for agricultural purposes. Despite the policy, therefore, forest quality was continuously decreased. The study argued that the problem lay in two main causes, which were the continued forest dependence of the tenants and the discrepancy of the policy implementation. It suggested a focus on livelihood of local forest-dependant population, to change the current situation.

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Poland has over 7 million hectare of national forest, which is the biggest in the member states of European Union. LP, the national forest management organization, is economically independent from the government, and taking in charge of whole national forest with fulfilling the objectives provided by the Forest Act. It is interesting that the balance between rigid hierarchic organizational structure and decentralized forest management activities in the field. This paper aims to illuminate the present state of national forest management system in Poland with scoping out three different management levels: General Directorate, Regional Directorate, and Forest District. In addition, the author discussed several points of their advantages and disadvantages in the way of forest management and organization itself. Even though LP has some problems to overcome in the future, their overall performance should be qualified as very good.

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Since the mid 1980s in the United States, large areas of forestland owned by vertically integrated forest products companies have been purchased by TIMO or REIT. This results in a hitherto known type of forest management of much larger scale on a basis of huge investment funds such as pension funds and retirement funds. Not only can this new movement be considered as American peculiar movement, but also this is possibly a sign of new era in the global history of forest management. This research considers the following three objectives for further clarification of this movement. (1) Profitability of large-scale reforestation management in the United States, (2) Advantage of selling forestland in response to the rising value of forestland, (3) Availability of preferential tax treatment for REIT. The findings are as follows. (1) Internal rate of return on man-made forest management is approximately 6%. Therefore, higher returns can be expected than US Treasury or yields of banks, (2) The current value of forestland has become well over the past ones when forests were owned by forests products companies as industrial forests. Therefore, selling forestland in response to the rise of forest price is advantageous today, (3) As for the presence of preferential tax treatment, dividends-paid deduction is available for the profit of REIT to adjust dual taxation.

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