Costs, Benefits and the Optimal Rotation of Standing Forests
Thesis/Dissertation Embargo Procedures
The Faustmann model has played a key role in the determination of optimal forest rotations. Faustmann introduced a simple and deterministic competitive economic model, the objective of which was to maximize the present value of perpetual returns to the fixed factor of production, a unit of timber land. The optimal rotation problem, as viewed by him, is a timber management problem abstracting from the important multiple use characteristics of forest land. Hartman (1976) and Strang (1983) developed a modified Faustmann model where the forest resource stock 'per se' is assumed to have consumptive value in the form of "recreation", a general term used to capture non-timber forest uses.