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- Title
Location of the Softwood Plywood and Lumber Industries: A Regional Programming Analysis.
- Authors
Holley, D. L.
- Abstract
The location of the softwood plywood and lumber industries is raw-material oriented. Sawtimber, the major raw material, is heavy and bulky, and up to 85 per cent weight loss occurs in manufacture. The cost of transporting lumber and plywood from mill to points of consumption is also a major, though less important, determinant of location. In the past, industry has tended to concentrate in timber regions that minimized product transportation costs to the Nation's centers of population. As a result, sawtimber stocks in the most accessible regions were used at a rapid rate. Since 50 or more years are required to grow trees large enough to be converted into plywood or lumber, industry has constantly been forced to move on to new timber areas. The objective of this article is to analyze the current state of locational instability in the plywood and lumber industries using a spatial equilibrium transportation model. With 1965 production data the analysis measures how far the location of the two industries has drifted from the perfectly competitive norm. A second application of the model based on data projected to 1975, derives the shifts required to bring about the most efficient location of industry. The spatial structure of sawtimber prices implied by the 1975 solution forms a basis for discussion of priorities in interregional forestry investment.
- Subjects
INDUSTRIAL location; LUMBER industry; ECONOMIC equilibrium; FORESTRY investment; TRANSPORTATION policy; MATHEMATICAL models; PLYWOOD industry; TRANSPORTATION rates
- Publication
Land Economics, 1970, Vol 46, Issue 2, p127
- ISSN
0023-7639
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3145170