Valuing the Impact of Large-Scale Ecological Change in a Market: The Effect of Climate Change on U.S. Timber

By Brent Sohngen and Robert Mendelsohn

The American Economic Review

This paper establishes a methodology for valuing the impact of large-scale ecological changes in a market. Given the large capital stocks inherent in most ecological systems, the dynamic nature of most ecological change, and the dynamic response of markets, it is critical to build dynamic models to capture the resulting effects. This paper demonstrates how to construct such a model using the impacts of climate change on U.S. timber markets as an example. Across a wide range of scenarios and models, warming is predicted to expand timber supplies and thus benefit U.S. timber markets.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/117001