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International Conference
BUILDING
INSIGHTS OF MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS AND ACCOUNTING TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE FOREST
MANAGEMENT May 17 19, 2007
IUFRO Unit 4.05.00 - Managerial Economics and AccountingIUFRO Unit 4.05.01 - Managerial, social and environmental accounting IUFRO Unit 4.05.02 - Managerial economics |
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Bernhard Möhring
Institute for Forest Economics, University of Göttingen, Germany
Email: bmoehri@gwdg.de
The question of efficiency of bounded resources in the silvicultural (biological) production strikes a central question of forest economics, because it concerns the rationality in the forest business. In the past a large variety of economical decision criteria, such as the maximisation of the forest revenue or the soil rent, the land expectation value, the increment percent, Presslers indication percent, etc. have been developed. Such decision criteria have to help decision-makers finding economically optimal or rational operations for silvicultural treatment, but in Germany the forest practice is still confused by the variety of criteria, so that they are seldom used in forest management.
This contribution tries to order the multitude of economical decision criteria by assigning them to various types of decision situations. Thereby the premises of availability of resources play a central role. These premises concern the scarcity of productive forest land as well as the shortage of capital funds. In this context the question also has to be answered, as to how far a decision situation can be interpreted as a beneficial decision or as a choice decision, where additional internal restrictions such as sustainability have to be considered.
By means of actual examples, which demonstrate different decision situations in a very simplified way with the help of Excel calculation frames, the coherences between the premises and the various decision criteria are displayed to make them easier to identify and better interpretable.
Using strongly simplified forest production models, varying the thinning intensity and the harvesting age and taking the restriction of sustainability into account, it is interesting that economic decision criteria, which consider scarcity of land and financial funds, can explain practical silvicultural decision behaviour in a suitable way.
By this means this contribution wants to show, that silvicultural activities and economical rationality are not antagonists. On the contrary, commonly observed principles of forest management in Germany can be interpreted and explained with rational economical means.
