Does information help forest owners form (better) timber price forecasts?

Impacts of forestry related information on forest owners’ ability to forecast timber price changes are studied. Large survey data on non-industrial private forest owners are explored with methodology on discrete and limited dependent variable econometrics. We find that forest owners who regard information sources as important for themselves, and who are active users of information sources are better prepared to provide a timber price forecast as compared to forest owners without these attributes. This tendency is not as clear among forest owners who have contacts with forestry professionals more than other forest owners. Availability and use of information did not seem to improve forest owners’ forecasting accuracy, however. Within market conditions in which timber prices fell quite sharply, information led forest owners to predict no change in timber prices.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author