Forest rent assessment for the Russian economy using timber sale auctions data

Abstract

The paper is based on hypothesis the timber sales auctions provide the most reliable data for the assessment of forest rent. An approach of assessing of the forest rent in the Russian economy using the open data interface of governmental services is suggested. The weighted OLS method is used for the assessment of linear specification of forest rent model taking the volume of logging as weighting variable. Modeling of both Paretian and Ricardian forest rent is performed depending on the main rent-producing factors: type of forest stand, trunk volume and removal distance. The suggested approach has been tested on the dataset of timber sale auctions conducted in different Russian regions in 2013. The results of performed estimation show that the consolidated budget of the Russian Federation currently lacks of three quarters of the actual forest rent. The remaining part of forest rent is captured by the mediators of the timber market