Building Structural Forest Sector Models for Projection and Policy
Analysis in British Columbia: Lessons from the U.S. Experience

Dr. Darius Adams, Professor, Department of Forest Resources, Oregon State University

October 17, 2005

Please click here to view/download a PDF version of the presentation (.pdf 1.04MB); also
available from our Publications page, under "Presentations".

The British Columbia forest sector faces a time of unprecedented economic challenges. With the cross border trade issue, the MBP epidemic, and increasing global competition in commodity products, the time is now for the BC forest sector to develop a new competition strategy. Economic modeling is a powerful tool that has been used to better understand the impact of such challenges and develop proactive policies for moving ahead.

For the past 25 years Darius Adams has developed structural economic models of the US forest sector that have been used to analyze a wide range of forest policy challenges. His presentation will focus on the model builder’s choices in structuring economic models so that they are adaptable to a wide range of evolving policy questions. He will present examples of regional, national, and international models used in the US forest sector, and drawn from his wide experience he will compare past projections and actual sector development. This talk is a must if you are an active economic modeler of if you are interested in how economic models can be used to help build competitive strategies.