US trade in transition - an econometric view of South Sea wood flows

Abstract

There were distinct stages of growth and development in the 1960s and 1970s in the flow of South Sea tropical hardwood as it made its way from the forests of Indonesia, East Malaysia, and the Philippines to the transit plywood-manufacturing plants of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and thence to US markets. The expansionary phase started in the early 1960s and was characterized by a dramatic rise in South Korean and Taiwanese plywood exports which found distinct niches in the US market. By its end, in the early 1970s, these countries supplied, respectively, 60% and 30% of US demand. A quasi-spatial econometric model was used to investigate plywood and log flows over the 1962-1979 period. The consequences of SEALPA log export restrictions that started around 1980 were analyzed using estimated reduced-form relationships and a gap-type model. -from Authors