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Abstract
Roundwood markets have experienced progressing globalization during the past two decades, with investments from traditional forest sectors flowing to emerging forest sectors. Progressing globalization of wood markets suggests that roundwood prices worldwide may follow similar trends. The objective of this research was to study the relationships among the most important roundwood markets in the world. The dissertation comprises three studies: (1) forestry, livestock, and economic growth in Uruguay, (2) global pulpwood markets and the Law of One Price (LOP), and (3) selected sawlog markets and the Law of One Price. The results from the first study indicate that the forest sector in Uruguay has had approximately a 2% share of the countrys GDP since 1997, when the industrial forest plantation area started to increase rapidly. Furthermore, wood products and beef export prices did not follow a common trend for the period 2001 through 2011, indicating that forest products have contributed to exports diversification in terms of exports income. The results from the second study suggested that while several long-term pulpwood price relationships have been discovered, the LOP generally did not hold with the exception of Germany and Norway, where the LOP was close to holding for coniferous pulpwood prices. Finally, the results from the third study suggested that some of the coniferous sawlog markets were cointegrated which means that they shared a long-term relationship even if in the short-term they do not necessarily adjust to each other. The LOP was close to holding between coniferous sawlog markets in Sweden and Norway from 1995 through 2012 when sawlog prices were expressed in USD, and in Norway and Finland from 2001 through 2012 for prices in EUR. Furthermore, the LOP was close to holding for North American markets in the West for the period 2004-2012.