- Email: [email protected]
Faustmann continues to yield
Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Forest Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/jfe
Introduction
Faustmann continues to yield Gregory S. Amacher a, Richard J. Brazee b,∗, Peter Deegen c a b c
Virginia Tech, 304 D. Cheatham Hall, Blacksburg, VA, United States University of Illinois, NRES, W-523 Turner Hall, 1102 S. Goodwin, Urbana, IL, United States Stockhardt-Bau, Raum E08, TU Dresden, Germany
The articles in this issue of the Journal of Forest Economics were among those presented at the Third International Faustmann Symposium: “Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World.” This Symposium celebrated the 160th anniversary of the publication of Martin Faustmann’s 1849 paper, “Berechnung des Wertes welchen Waldboden sowie noch nicht haubare Holzbestände für die Waldwirschaft besitzen” (Calculation of the Value which Forest Land and Immature Stands Possess for Forestry) in Allgemeine Forst- und Jagd-Zeitung (General Journal of Forestry and Hunting). The Symposium was held October 28–31, 2009 in Darmstadt, Germany to honor both Faustmann’s hometown and the month in which his famous paper was published. Twenty-five manuscripts associated with presentations at the Third International Faustmann Symposium were submitted by January 2010 to the Journal of Forest Economics for consideration to be published in this special issue. Manuscripts were reviewed and revised between January 2010 and April 2011. Competition to be included in this special issue was sharp. Several very promising papers were declined. The papers included reflect work at the frontiers of forest economics, particularly with respect to rotation age analysis. Faustmann Symposia The story of Martin Faustmann, his 1849 article, and that article’s role in the development of forest economics are well known and will not be repeated here. A partial list of work on Faustmann or “Berechnung des Wertes welchen Waldboden sowie noch nicht haubare Holzbestände für die Waldwirschaft besitzen” that emphasizes historical presentations, development of forest economics, and Faustmann Symposia includes Hermansen (1969), Löfgren (1983, 2000), Scorgie and Kennedy (1996), Helles and Linddal (1997), Brazee (2001), Chang (2001), Newman (2002), Amacher et al. (2009) and Faustmann Symposia webpages. The three International Faustmann Symposia each attracted forest economists from several continents. The Third Symposium, similar to the First Symposium in 1999, was held in Darmstadt, Germany,
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.J. Brazee). 1104-6899/$ – see front matter © 2011 Department of Forest Economics, SLU Umeå, Sweden. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfe.2011.06.001
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G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
and like the First Symposium there were over 60 submitted papers and abstracts. These two symposia were probably the largest multiple-continent gatherings of forest economists ever. The Second International Faustmann Symposium was held in Baton Rouge, LA, USA in 2005. Although a smaller gathering the attendees at the Second Symposium also exhibited great geograhical diversity. Current plans are to hold Fourth, Fifth and Sixth International Faustmann Symposia in Finland (2012), Chile (2015) and Darmstadt (2019). Given their similarities, the First and Third Faustmann Symposia provide snapshots of the field of forest economics a decade apart. The Third Symposium suggests that not only does a meeting with Faustmann themes still appeal to forest economists, but that the field of forest economics continues with vitality. Even with a dramatic decrease in participation by forest economists based in North and South America compared to the First Symposium due in part to the impact of the global recession on travel funds, the Third Symposium was well-attended with many high quality papers and presentations. In addition to a large number of participants from the host country, many European countries, especially Finland, were better represented at the Third Symposium than at the First Symposium. Additional information regarding participants is available on the symposia webpages. The First Symposium arguably started a revolution of sorts among researchers in Germany. After World War II, and unlike Scandinavia and North America, the Faustmann model fell out of favour in Germany and languished mainly in forestry history textbooks. Only in forest valuation problems did the Faustmann formula exist in any form, and then only modestly. To wit, a quick review of three German forest science journals from 1990 to 1999 reveals only one paper published that focused on Faustmann theory. In contrast, from 2000 to 2009 six Faustmann papers in the same journals are found. Another sign of a revival is the international Ph.D. Faustmann summer school with Sun Joseph Chang which began in Germany in 2007. In many ways, after an absence of 80 years, the First Faustmann Symposium brought the Faustmann model back to its home. Papers The presentations of the Third International Symposium were organized into 6 thematic areas: Climate change and forestry. Economics of forest management. Nonindustrial private forest owners, empirical studies and policy. Stochastic studies. Studies on the basis of Faustmann’s and Pressler’s ideas. Regional studies. A complete description of the papers and presentations of the Third International Symposium may be found in the Symposium Proceedings Forstökonomie in einer dynamischen und sich ändernden Welt (Forest economics in a Dynamic and Changing World) and the Symposium webpage. The articles accepted for this special issue range in topic from regeneration, amenities, carbon sequestration, stochastic rotation age and silvicultural practice. A trend in the literature over the past couple of decades has been to search for Faustmann-like solutions when future parameters are uncertain. The papers in this issue reflect this trend in that five of the eight papers deal with either risk or uncertainty across a wide range of situations. Patrice Loisel in his article, ‘Faustmann rotation and population dynamics in the presence of a risk of destructive events’, considers a situation where there is risk of natural destructive events during future rotations and examines the impact of this risk on silvicultural practices such as thinning. An interesting novelty in his work is to incorporate models of population dynamics into Faustmann solutions with and without risk. Loisel derives several rules regarding changes in thinning regimes and optimal rotation lengths. Other results address the effect of stochastic market parameters on optimal rotation and planting densities. Joseph Buongiorno and Mo Zhou, in their article, ‘Further generalization of Faustmann’s formula for stochastic interest rates’, study an area of much recent attention concerning how uncertain future interest rates should affect the value of land. They employ Markov decision models to derive a gen-
G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
233
eralization of Faustmann’s formula that includes stochastic interest rates, and which generalizes past work focusing only on stand state and price uncertainty. Buongirono and Zhou estimate the potentially substantial costs of not incorporating the variation of interest rates on land expectation value in decision making. Chang and Deegen’s article, ‘Pressler’s indicator rate formula as a guide for forest management’ studies unanticipated future market conditions, revisiting the Generalized Faustmann Formula to show that Pressler’s famous indicator rate formula emerges as an optimal condition for the choice of rotation age. In doing so the authors modernize Pressler’s formula concerning forest quantity increments, quality increments, and price increments over time, and use this new formula to solve for optimal rotation age under changing future forest and market states. Barua, Kuuluvainen, and Uusivuori examine the problem of a nonindustrial private forest landowner in a utility maximization model with bequests, and inheritance and capital income taxes, where the landowner may or not survive into future periods. In their article, ‘Taxation, life-time uncertainty and non-industrial private forest-owner’s decision-making’, they examine a forest owner’s consumption and harvesting decisions using a two-period model with a less than one probability of surviving to the second period. They examine how ageing affects landowners’ consumption and harvesting decisions, and consider how the effects of taxes depend on landowner age. The simulation results show that current consumption first decreases, and then increases as landowners age, and these effects do not depend on whether non-timber assets are more or less heavilytaxed through bequests than consumption. The authors also show among other results that the effects of these taxes are dependent on the forest owner’s age, in that age increases the impact of the forest bequest tax on harvesting but decreases the effect of the inheritance tax on nontimber assets. The final uncertainty-related article is by Bernetti, Fagarazzi, Ciampi, and Sacchelli, ‘The evaluation of forest crop damages due to climate change’. This article offers a potentially fruitful direction for examining climate damage risk in forests through the application of the Dempster-Shafer method. The authors followed assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to define hazard and resilience functions. The model includes a merging of the Faustmann formula with spatial data modeled using raster maps. The authors use the model to estimate the expected damage to forest crops on the basis of the current obtainable woody assortments, and the possible expenses required to mitigate the risk. The model was calibrated using data from central Italy. Carbon and Faustmann are the themes in the first article by Price and Willis, ‘The multiple effects of carbon values on optimal rotation’. Nonconsumptive carbon benefits that increase with crop age are introduced and carbon sequestration is measured as a function of forest age. These changes are found to increase the optimal rotation age from when only timber is valued. If sequestered carbon flow prices are high enough, then the rotation age may approach infinity, and the trees are never harvested. However, if a price exists for carbon stored in finished wood products (that depend on harvesting), then this result may not hold. The authors also add biomass energy as a possible output, and finding that valuing biomass as an energy source increases rotation age toward maximum biomass productivity. Other similar results arise by considering the effect of using sawn timber to displace structural materials with high embodied carbon. However, allowing for soil carbon storage and fossil carbon volatilized in harvesting adds complications. The authors find that including all possible carbon effects in the optimal rotation tends to make rotation age higher than those derived in a model based only on timber harvest value, but the rotation age is lower than the one that is based only on timber plus forest biomass carbon storage. Price considers the problem of declining interest rates and the optimal rotation in ‘Optimal rotation with declining discount rate’. Here, he considers forest investment decisions in light of recent policy initiatives by national governments to either lower discount rates over time, or to ensure that the discount rate declines over the life of the project in evaluating public projects with long planning horizons. The author uncovers several new problems that arise when the optimal duration of forest investments and harvests are considered against this policy backdrop. Lower discount rates make rotations longer than earlier ones, and for a given length, more valuable than they would otherwise be in the absence of the policy. This affects the optimal length of earlier rotations, which in turn can affect the discount rate profile applied to later rotations. Several numerical results are used to investigate
234
G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
and confirm these expectations. These results have important policy implications for governments who have adopted or are considering adopting declining interest rates. Halbritter and Deegen round out the special issue with a study of plantation management under varying site productivity. Their article, ‘Economic analysis of exploitation and regeneration in plantations with problematic site productivity’, considers the importance of declining site productivity over time on land expectation value and optimal rotation ages. The model allows a study of the continuum of the best through the worst case sites. The authors extend the Faustmann model in this case to consider the possibility of “recovering technology” employment. The model allows direct comparison through comparative static effects of two types of plantation management strategies: “mining the site by high productive plantation followed by management of degraded areas” and “high productive plantation and regeneration cycling.” In doing this the authors are able to elaborate on the issue of how land management should proceed when site productivity decline is a possibility. Acknowledgements Although many people’s efforts were essential for completion of this issue, special thanks go to Bernhard Moehring Universität Göttingen and Martin Moog Technische Universität München the local organizers of the Third International Symposium, Olli Tahvonen University of Helsinki the program co-chair of the Third International Symposium, and Sun Joseph Chang, Louisiana State University, the general organizer of the Faustmann Symposia. The Third International Faustmann Symposium would not have been possible without the organizational assistance of the Hessian forest administration, Hessen-Forst, the Foundation Hessischer Jägerhof, the museum Jagdschloss Kranichstein, Prof. Dr. Arnulf Rosenstock, and the financial assistance of the Wilhelm von Finck Stiftung, the Georg-Ludwig-Hartig-Stiftung, the Blauwald GmbH & Co. KG, the J. Rettenmeier & Söhne GmbH & Co. KG, the Forest Finance Service GmbH and HSH Fürst zu Oettingen-Spielberg. The willingness of IUFRO Unit 4.05.00 Managerial Economics and Accounting to hold their conference “Sustainable Forest Management and Accounting - Resolutions During the Financial Crisis” in Darmstadt just prior to the Symposium contributed to the success of the Third International Symposium, and this issue. References Amacher, G., Ollikainen, M., Koskela, E., 2009. Economics of Forest Resources. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, London. Brazee, R.J., 2001. The Faustmann Formula: fundamental to forest economics 150 years after publication. Forest Science 47, 441–442. Chang, S.J., 2001. One formula, myriad conclusions, 150 years of practicing the Faustmann Formula in Central Europe and the USA. Forest Policy and Economics 2, 97–99. Faustmann, M. 1849. On the determination of the value which forestland and immature stands pose for forestry. Reprinted in Journal of Forest Economics 1:7–44 (1995). First International Faustmann Symposium: 150 Years of the Faustmann Formula: the consequences for forestry and economics in the past, present, and future 1999. Homepage: http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/sjchang/Faustmann.html. 2010. Forstökonomie in einer dynamischen und sich ändernden Welt (Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World). J.D. Sauerländer’s Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-7939-7036-1. Helles, F., Linddal, M., 1997. Early Danish contributions to forest economics. Journal of Forest Economics 3, 87–103. Hermansen, N.K., 1969. New aspects of classical problems in forest economics. In: Svendsrud, A. (Ed.), Readings in Forest economics. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Bergen, Tromsö, pp. 65–72. Löfgren, K.-G., 1983. The Faustmann-Ohlin Theorem: a historical note. History of Political Economy 15, 261–264. Löfgren, K.-G., 2000. Faustmann and the invention of the das Spiegel-Hypsometer. Journal of Forest Economics 6, 185–186. Newman, D.H., 2002. Forestry’s golden rule and the development of the optimal forest rotation literature. Journal of Forest Economics 8, 5–27. Scorgie, M., Kennedy, J., 1996. Who discovered the Faustmann condition. History of Political Economy 28, 77–80. Second International Faustmann Symposium: Faustmann and Optimal Stopping Times in Forestry and Beyond 2005. Homepage: http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/sjchang/Second%20Faustmann/program.html. Third International Faustmann Symposium: Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World 2009. Homepage: http://www.faustmann-conference.de/.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Forest Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/jfe
Introduction
Faustmann continues to yield Gregory S. Amacher a, Richard J. Brazee b,∗, Peter Deegen c a b c
Virginia Tech, 304 D. Cheatham Hall, Blacksburg, VA, United States University of Illinois, NRES, W-523 Turner Hall, 1102 S. Goodwin, Urbana, IL, United States Stockhardt-Bau, Raum E08, TU Dresden, Germany
The articles in this issue of the Journal of Forest Economics were among those presented at the Third International Faustmann Symposium: “Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World.” This Symposium celebrated the 160th anniversary of the publication of Martin Faustmann’s 1849 paper, “Berechnung des Wertes welchen Waldboden sowie noch nicht haubare Holzbestände für die Waldwirschaft besitzen” (Calculation of the Value which Forest Land and Immature Stands Possess for Forestry) in Allgemeine Forst- und Jagd-Zeitung (General Journal of Forestry and Hunting). The Symposium was held October 28–31, 2009 in Darmstadt, Germany to honor both Faustmann’s hometown and the month in which his famous paper was published. Twenty-five manuscripts associated with presentations at the Third International Faustmann Symposium were submitted by January 2010 to the Journal of Forest Economics for consideration to be published in this special issue. Manuscripts were reviewed and revised between January 2010 and April 2011. Competition to be included in this special issue was sharp. Several very promising papers were declined. The papers included reflect work at the frontiers of forest economics, particularly with respect to rotation age analysis. Faustmann Symposia The story of Martin Faustmann, his 1849 article, and that article’s role in the development of forest economics are well known and will not be repeated here. A partial list of work on Faustmann or “Berechnung des Wertes welchen Waldboden sowie noch nicht haubare Holzbestände für die Waldwirschaft besitzen” that emphasizes historical presentations, development of forest economics, and Faustmann Symposia includes Hermansen (1969), Löfgren (1983, 2000), Scorgie and Kennedy (1996), Helles and Linddal (1997), Brazee (2001), Chang (2001), Newman (2002), Amacher et al. (2009) and Faustmann Symposia webpages. The three International Faustmann Symposia each attracted forest economists from several continents. The Third Symposium, similar to the First Symposium in 1999, was held in Darmstadt, Germany,
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.J. Brazee). 1104-6899/$ – see front matter © 2011 Department of Forest Economics, SLU Umeå, Sweden. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfe.2011.06.001
232
G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
and like the First Symposium there were over 60 submitted papers and abstracts. These two symposia were probably the largest multiple-continent gatherings of forest economists ever. The Second International Faustmann Symposium was held in Baton Rouge, LA, USA in 2005. Although a smaller gathering the attendees at the Second Symposium also exhibited great geograhical diversity. Current plans are to hold Fourth, Fifth and Sixth International Faustmann Symposia in Finland (2012), Chile (2015) and Darmstadt (2019). Given their similarities, the First and Third Faustmann Symposia provide snapshots of the field of forest economics a decade apart. The Third Symposium suggests that not only does a meeting with Faustmann themes still appeal to forest economists, but that the field of forest economics continues with vitality. Even with a dramatic decrease in participation by forest economists based in North and South America compared to the First Symposium due in part to the impact of the global recession on travel funds, the Third Symposium was well-attended with many high quality papers and presentations. In addition to a large number of participants from the host country, many European countries, especially Finland, were better represented at the Third Symposium than at the First Symposium. Additional information regarding participants is available on the symposia webpages. The First Symposium arguably started a revolution of sorts among researchers in Germany. After World War II, and unlike Scandinavia and North America, the Faustmann model fell out of favour in Germany and languished mainly in forestry history textbooks. Only in forest valuation problems did the Faustmann formula exist in any form, and then only modestly. To wit, a quick review of three German forest science journals from 1990 to 1999 reveals only one paper published that focused on Faustmann theory. In contrast, from 2000 to 2009 six Faustmann papers in the same journals are found. Another sign of a revival is the international Ph.D. Faustmann summer school with Sun Joseph Chang which began in Germany in 2007. In many ways, after an absence of 80 years, the First Faustmann Symposium brought the Faustmann model back to its home. Papers The presentations of the Third International Symposium were organized into 6 thematic areas: Climate change and forestry. Economics of forest management. Nonindustrial private forest owners, empirical studies and policy. Stochastic studies. Studies on the basis of Faustmann’s and Pressler’s ideas. Regional studies. A complete description of the papers and presentations of the Third International Symposium may be found in the Symposium Proceedings Forstökonomie in einer dynamischen und sich ändernden Welt (Forest economics in a Dynamic and Changing World) and the Symposium webpage. The articles accepted for this special issue range in topic from regeneration, amenities, carbon sequestration, stochastic rotation age and silvicultural practice. A trend in the literature over the past couple of decades has been to search for Faustmann-like solutions when future parameters are uncertain. The papers in this issue reflect this trend in that five of the eight papers deal with either risk or uncertainty across a wide range of situations. Patrice Loisel in his article, ‘Faustmann rotation and population dynamics in the presence of a risk of destructive events’, considers a situation where there is risk of natural destructive events during future rotations and examines the impact of this risk on silvicultural practices such as thinning. An interesting novelty in his work is to incorporate models of population dynamics into Faustmann solutions with and without risk. Loisel derives several rules regarding changes in thinning regimes and optimal rotation lengths. Other results address the effect of stochastic market parameters on optimal rotation and planting densities. Joseph Buongiorno and Mo Zhou, in their article, ‘Further generalization of Faustmann’s formula for stochastic interest rates’, study an area of much recent attention concerning how uncertain future interest rates should affect the value of land. They employ Markov decision models to derive a gen-
G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
233
eralization of Faustmann’s formula that includes stochastic interest rates, and which generalizes past work focusing only on stand state and price uncertainty. Buongirono and Zhou estimate the potentially substantial costs of not incorporating the variation of interest rates on land expectation value in decision making. Chang and Deegen’s article, ‘Pressler’s indicator rate formula as a guide for forest management’ studies unanticipated future market conditions, revisiting the Generalized Faustmann Formula to show that Pressler’s famous indicator rate formula emerges as an optimal condition for the choice of rotation age. In doing so the authors modernize Pressler’s formula concerning forest quantity increments, quality increments, and price increments over time, and use this new formula to solve for optimal rotation age under changing future forest and market states. Barua, Kuuluvainen, and Uusivuori examine the problem of a nonindustrial private forest landowner in a utility maximization model with bequests, and inheritance and capital income taxes, where the landowner may or not survive into future periods. In their article, ‘Taxation, life-time uncertainty and non-industrial private forest-owner’s decision-making’, they examine a forest owner’s consumption and harvesting decisions using a two-period model with a less than one probability of surviving to the second period. They examine how ageing affects landowners’ consumption and harvesting decisions, and consider how the effects of taxes depend on landowner age. The simulation results show that current consumption first decreases, and then increases as landowners age, and these effects do not depend on whether non-timber assets are more or less heavilytaxed through bequests than consumption. The authors also show among other results that the effects of these taxes are dependent on the forest owner’s age, in that age increases the impact of the forest bequest tax on harvesting but decreases the effect of the inheritance tax on nontimber assets. The final uncertainty-related article is by Bernetti, Fagarazzi, Ciampi, and Sacchelli, ‘The evaluation of forest crop damages due to climate change’. This article offers a potentially fruitful direction for examining climate damage risk in forests through the application of the Dempster-Shafer method. The authors followed assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to define hazard and resilience functions. The model includes a merging of the Faustmann formula with spatial data modeled using raster maps. The authors use the model to estimate the expected damage to forest crops on the basis of the current obtainable woody assortments, and the possible expenses required to mitigate the risk. The model was calibrated using data from central Italy. Carbon and Faustmann are the themes in the first article by Price and Willis, ‘The multiple effects of carbon values on optimal rotation’. Nonconsumptive carbon benefits that increase with crop age are introduced and carbon sequestration is measured as a function of forest age. These changes are found to increase the optimal rotation age from when only timber is valued. If sequestered carbon flow prices are high enough, then the rotation age may approach infinity, and the trees are never harvested. However, if a price exists for carbon stored in finished wood products (that depend on harvesting), then this result may not hold. The authors also add biomass energy as a possible output, and finding that valuing biomass as an energy source increases rotation age toward maximum biomass productivity. Other similar results arise by considering the effect of using sawn timber to displace structural materials with high embodied carbon. However, allowing for soil carbon storage and fossil carbon volatilized in harvesting adds complications. The authors find that including all possible carbon effects in the optimal rotation tends to make rotation age higher than those derived in a model based only on timber harvest value, but the rotation age is lower than the one that is based only on timber plus forest biomass carbon storage. Price considers the problem of declining interest rates and the optimal rotation in ‘Optimal rotation with declining discount rate’. Here, he considers forest investment decisions in light of recent policy initiatives by national governments to either lower discount rates over time, or to ensure that the discount rate declines over the life of the project in evaluating public projects with long planning horizons. The author uncovers several new problems that arise when the optimal duration of forest investments and harvests are considered against this policy backdrop. Lower discount rates make rotations longer than earlier ones, and for a given length, more valuable than they would otherwise be in the absence of the policy. This affects the optimal length of earlier rotations, which in turn can affect the discount rate profile applied to later rotations. Several numerical results are used to investigate
234
G.S. Amacher et al. / Journal of Forest Economics 17 (2011) 231–234
and confirm these expectations. These results have important policy implications for governments who have adopted or are considering adopting declining interest rates. Halbritter and Deegen round out the special issue with a study of plantation management under varying site productivity. Their article, ‘Economic analysis of exploitation and regeneration in plantations with problematic site productivity’, considers the importance of declining site productivity over time on land expectation value and optimal rotation ages. The model allows a study of the continuum of the best through the worst case sites. The authors extend the Faustmann model in this case to consider the possibility of “recovering technology” employment. The model allows direct comparison through comparative static effects of two types of plantation management strategies: “mining the site by high productive plantation followed by management of degraded areas” and “high productive plantation and regeneration cycling.” In doing this the authors are able to elaborate on the issue of how land management should proceed when site productivity decline is a possibility. Acknowledgements Although many people’s efforts were essential for completion of this issue, special thanks go to Bernhard Moehring Universität Göttingen and Martin Moog Technische Universität München the local organizers of the Third International Symposium, Olli Tahvonen University of Helsinki the program co-chair of the Third International Symposium, and Sun Joseph Chang, Louisiana State University, the general organizer of the Faustmann Symposia. The Third International Faustmann Symposium would not have been possible without the organizational assistance of the Hessian forest administration, Hessen-Forst, the Foundation Hessischer Jägerhof, the museum Jagdschloss Kranichstein, Prof. Dr. Arnulf Rosenstock, and the financial assistance of the Wilhelm von Finck Stiftung, the Georg-Ludwig-Hartig-Stiftung, the Blauwald GmbH & Co. KG, the J. Rettenmeier & Söhne GmbH & Co. KG, the Forest Finance Service GmbH and HSH Fürst zu Oettingen-Spielberg. The willingness of IUFRO Unit 4.05.00 Managerial Economics and Accounting to hold their conference “Sustainable Forest Management and Accounting - Resolutions During the Financial Crisis” in Darmstadt just prior to the Symposium contributed to the success of the Third International Symposium, and this issue. References Amacher, G., Ollikainen, M., Koskela, E., 2009. Economics of Forest Resources. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, London. Brazee, R.J., 2001. The Faustmann Formula: fundamental to forest economics 150 years after publication. Forest Science 47, 441–442. Chang, S.J., 2001. One formula, myriad conclusions, 150 years of practicing the Faustmann Formula in Central Europe and the USA. Forest Policy and Economics 2, 97–99. Faustmann, M. 1849. On the determination of the value which forestland and immature stands pose for forestry. Reprinted in Journal of Forest Economics 1:7–44 (1995). First International Faustmann Symposium: 150 Years of the Faustmann Formula: the consequences for forestry and economics in the past, present, and future 1999. Homepage: http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/sjchang/Faustmann.html. 2010. Forstökonomie in einer dynamischen und sich ändernden Welt (Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World). J.D. Sauerländer’s Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-7939-7036-1. Helles, F., Linddal, M., 1997. Early Danish contributions to forest economics. Journal of Forest Economics 3, 87–103. Hermansen, N.K., 1969. New aspects of classical problems in forest economics. In: Svendsrud, A. (Ed.), Readings in Forest economics. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Bergen, Tromsö, pp. 65–72. Löfgren, K.-G., 1983. The Faustmann-Ohlin Theorem: a historical note. History of Political Economy 15, 261–264. Löfgren, K.-G., 2000. Faustmann and the invention of the das Spiegel-Hypsometer. Journal of Forest Economics 6, 185–186. Newman, D.H., 2002. Forestry’s golden rule and the development of the optimal forest rotation literature. Journal of Forest Economics 8, 5–27. Scorgie, M., Kennedy, J., 1996. Who discovered the Faustmann condition. History of Political Economy 28, 77–80. Second International Faustmann Symposium: Faustmann and Optimal Stopping Times in Forestry and Beyond 2005. Homepage: http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/sjchang/Second%20Faustmann/program.html. Third International Faustmann Symposium: Forest Economics in a Dynamic and Changing World 2009. Homepage: http://www.faustmann-conference.de/.