This thesis provides empirical evidence to assess the long term contribution of
the B.C. forest industry to the provincial economy.
Estimates of resource rent are constructed to measure the direct contribution
of the resource to provincial income and growth. Measures of rent are
constructed for a firm level sample (1906-76) and at an industry level (1918-92). The figures for rent are used to generate estimates of the share of provincial
income measures directly attributable to the industrial exploitation of the
province's forests. While there were periods during which the direct contribution
to provincial income and its growth was nontrivial, in general the growth
of forest industry rent did not drive overall economic growth but rather lagged
behind.
Rent was low on average and volatile during the years before W.W.II, rose
rapidly from roughly 1940-51, then declined unevenly. To investigate the forces
which underlie both the broad trends and the variability in rent, a stylized
model of the forest industry is applied in an empirical analysis. Broad changes
in aggregate rent were the result of changes in rent per unit of B.C. timber.
The rapid increase in rent coincided with a marked rise in the price of forest
products. The secular decline resulted from the combination of a falling output
price and rising costs. An investigation of real harvesting costs indicates that
depletion played a role in this increase. The variability of rent is also explored
and found to be most strongly influenced by factors reflecting market risk which
the B.C. industry could not diversity away from.
The rent measures may not capture the full impact of the forest industry,
so the industry's potential role as a leading export sector is also examined.
The possibility of a stable long term link between forest exports and provincial
income is investigated using cointegration tests. B.C. forest exports and G.D.P.
are not cointegrated; their levels axe not linked in a deterministic way in the
long run. A bivariate VAR, is used to examine the short run interaction between
the growth of forest exports and provincial G.D.P. The results do not strongly
support the view that the forest industry acts as a leading export sector in the
provincial economy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10173 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Metcalf, Cherie Maureen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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