Bin Mei

Journal Article Mathematical and Computational Forestry and Natural-Resource Sciences · January 1, 2024 Cohesive markets for pine sawtimber and pine pulpwood were identified across regions in the southeastern United States. Data were provided by TimberMart-South (TMS) and included 40 years of quarterly prices across 22 regions in 11 states. Markets were dete ... Cite

Journal of Forest Business Research: a leading platform for advancing forest business and investment science research

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · December 31, 2023 The Journal of Forest Business Research (JFBR), an international peer-reviewed and open-access journal, has been developed to offer a novel publication avenue for forest business research contributions. This effort has been motivated by the realiza ... Full text Cite

Forest Conference Report No. 1, 2023

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · December 29, 2023 Forest Conference Reports provide the overview of selected conferences the JFBR Editorial Team visited during a particular time. In our inaugural issue, we cover meetings throughout 2023. Forest conferences featured in this report: &#x0 ... Full text Cite

A review of the financial performance of lumber futures and some prospects

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · December 1, 2023 We aim to examine the financial performance of lumber futures by conducting a systematic review in the field. It begins with a historical overview of the evolution of lumber futures in the United States, followed by a synthesis of the methodologies employe ... Full text Cite

Forecasting pine sawtimber stumpage prices: A comparison between a time series hybrid model and an artificial neural network

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · September 1, 2023 We conducted a comparative analysis of the predictive ability of classical econometric models and artificial neural networks (ANNs) for pine sawtimber stumpage prices across 22 TimberMart-South regions in the US using quarterly prices from 1976 to 2022. We ... Full text Cite

Transaction Costs and Investment Interest in the U.S. South and the Pacific Northwest Timberland Regions

Journal Article Forests · August 1, 2023 In 2020, a survey was conducted of timberland investment professionals. The focus of the survey was collecting and examining transaction cost data within the timberland investment space. The data collected were generally lacking in the public domain, as we ... Full text Cite

Forestland investment: Valuation and analysis

Book · July 20, 2023 Forestland investment has surged in the past few decades as a result of land ownership change in the forestry industry. Timberland investment and management organizations and real estate investment trusts have bought up land and resources that were diveste ... Full text Cite

Quantifying carbon additionality for uneven-aged forests

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · July 3, 2023 Forests can be managed to sequester atmospheric carbon in addition to producing timber. Forest carbon represents a nature-based solution to climate change and global warming. To internalize the positive externality (social benefit) of forest carbon ... Full text Cite

Inflation hedging effectiveness of farmland and timberland assets in the United States

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · June 1, 2023 We examine the effectiveness of private- and public-equity farmland and timberland assets in hedging actual, expected, and unexpected inflation by using the capital asset pricing model under inflation. Rolling regression is used to assess the time-varying ... Full text Cite

Spatial Spillover Effects of Pine Sawtimber Stumpage Prices in the US South

Journal Article Forest Science · June 1, 2023 Timberland returns have three main drivers: biological growth, timber price, and land value. Among three of these drivers, timber price is the most volatile. Therefore, modeling and predicting timber prices has been of great concern for timberland investor ... Full text Cite

Carbon additionality: an illustration by southern pine plantations

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · March 22, 2023 Forests not only produce fiber but also sequester atmospheric carbon, which offers a nature-based solution to global warming. To internalize the externality of forest carbon, additionality must be defined and quantified. This study applies the disc ... Full text Cite

Carbon offset as another driver of timberland investment returns in the United States

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · January 31, 2023 Timberland investment has three return drivers: biological growth, timber price change and land value appreciation. The interaction of the three drivers determines the total timberland investment returns. Recent public attention to climate change r ... Full text Cite

Relationship of public farmland and timberland REITs with their private equity counterparts and selected asset classes

Journal Article Agricultural Finance Review · January 19, 2023 Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the return sensitivity of public farmland and timberland real estate investment trusts (REITs) to private-equity farmland, timberland and real estate, long-term corporate bonds and large- and small-cap stock ... Full text Cite

The Journal of Forest Business Research to Support Sustainable Forest Investments for Economic, Social, and Environmental Benefits

Journal Article BioResources · January 1, 2023 The forest sector plays an important role in sustainable development for market and nonmarket goods and services. Investors and policy makers are increasingly seeking to rely on forests to provide both commercial forest products and nature-based solutions ... Full text Cite

Spatial Analysis of the Attributes of Working Forest Conservation Easements in the State of Georgia

Journal Article Society and Natural Resources · January 1, 2023 Working forest conservation easements (WFCEs) are increasingly used to protect working forests. However, their attributes such as forest management activities, landowner goals, landscape features, and land uses vary significantly. Understanding the trends ... Full text Cite

The Financial Performance of Newly Launched Chinese Infrastructure REITs

Journal Article Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management · January 1, 2023 This paper explores the financial performance of the first group of nine infrastructure real estate investment trusts (REITs) that went public in mainland China in June 2021. Under the short-term event study framework, this research compares the abnormal r ... Full text Cite

Journal of Forest Business Research: an online scientific journal devoted to the science and practice of sustainable business in the forest sector

Journal Article Journal of Forest Business Research · December 30, 2022 On behalf of our authors, reviewers, editors, scientific board members, and supporting institutions – we warmly welcome you to the inaugural issue of The Journal of Forest Business Research (JFBR). Establishing a new journal that addresses serious ... Full text Cite

Optimal contract arrangements for conservation on working forests

Journal Article Natural Resource Modeling · November 1, 2022 Forestland can be managed for timber and environmental goods simultaneously. A conservation contract allows a government agency to pay a landowner for the portion of property rights encumbered in the production of environmental goods. In this study, a theo ... Full text Cite

The Time-Varying Link of Public Timber REITs with Private Timberland, Real Estate, and Financial Assets

Journal Article Forest Science · October 1, 2022 We examined the relationship between public timber real estate investment trusts (REIT), private timberland, real estate, and financial asset returns using a multi-factor model and investigated the time-varying volatility of timber REITs under the state sp ... Full text Cite

Benefit-cost analysis of forest carbon for landowners: An illustration based on a southern pine plantation

Journal Article Frontiers in Forests and Global Change · August 10, 2022 Using a hypothetic southern pine plantation in the state of Georgia of the United States, a benefit-cost analysis of forest carbon is conducted for landowners in the voluntary carbon market. With carbon values being defined by the marginal forest growth, i ... Full text Cite

Tree Planting Subsidies and Land Use Switching between Forestry and Agriculture in the US South

Journal Article Journal of Forest Economics · July 25, 2022 A regime switching model based on real options shows that optimal land use switching boundaries are contingent upon the stochastic behavior (trend and volatility) of timberland and cropland returns, conversion costs, and return correlation. Using this mode ... Full text Cite

Timber Business in West Africa: A Review and Outlook

Journal Article International Forestry Review · June 1, 2022 Forestry activities are important to the economies of West African nations. This paper aims to assess the current state of forest business in the sub-region, identify factors that may limit the development of the sector and suggest possible solutions. To a ... Full text Cite

The performance of private equity timberland funds in the United States between 1985 and 2018

Journal Article Journal of Forest Economics · March 30, 2022 Between the end of 1980s and today, the timberland asset class managed by timberland investment management organizations in the United States has grown from one to over 30 billion USD. However, to date, the application of scholarly research on the assessme ... Full text Cite

On the performance of Timberland as an alternative asset

Journal Article Journal of Forest Economics · March 30, 2022 The financial performance of timberland as an alternative asset is assessed by the intertemporal capital asset pricing model and Fama-MecBeth two-step regression method. In the analysis, alternative assets include emerging markets, hedge funds, private equ ... Full text Cite

Special issue on the economics of global forest investments

Journal Article Journal of Forest Economics · March 30, 2022 Full text Cite

The effect of climate variability factors on potential net primary productivity uncertainty: An analysis with a stochastic spatial 3-PG model

Journal Article Agricultural and Forest Meteorology · March 15, 2022 Yearly climate fluctuations introduce variability in forest productivity that impacts final yield. Over the decade-to-century timescale, climate change is likely to have similar effects. Therefore, yield forecasts based on average climatic values are expec ... Full text Cite

On the Risk of Novel Specialized REITs

Journal Article Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management · January 2, 2022 Full text Cite

Forest Sustainability in State Forest Management Plans: A Content Analysis

Journal Article Journal of Sustainable Forestry · January 1, 2022 A commitment to sustainability is often demonstrated through both management plans and the implementation of practices. We applied content analysis to a sample of state forest management plans from the United States to examine the terms associated with sus ... Full text Cite

Development and performance of timber REITs in the United States: a review and some prospects

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · January 1, 2022 Timber real estate investment trusts (REITs) are companies that own and manage timberland and generate revenue by harvesting and selling timber or other forest-related products. Due to their popularity with investors, timber REITs in the United States have ... Full text Cite

From backwoods to boardrooms: The rise of institutional investment in timberland, ISBN 9780870711428, Daowei Zhang. Oregon State University Press, 2021. 280 p

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · December 1, 2021 Timberland ownership in the world, especially in the United States, has experienced significant changes in the past few decades. In this commentary, I reviewed a recently published book by Daowei Zhang under this theme. The book examined the driving forces ... Full text Cite

Volatility Decay and Diversification Role of Timberland as the Investment Horizon Lengthens

Journal Article Forest Science · October 1, 2021 Under the mean-variance efficiency framework, we investigate the role of timberland asset in a mixed-Asset portfolio in the United States. Starting from a single period (quarterly) view, we first reveal the crucial role of serial correlation in defining an ... Full text Cite

Long-term timber contracts in the southeastern United States: Updating the primer valuation framework

Journal Article Forest Science · December 1, 2020 Timberland ownership has drastically changed in the United States since the 1980s, driven by the divestitures of vertically integrated forest products companies. Having sold their timberland, forest products companies have exposed themselves more to the ri ... Full text Cite

Financial Effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Nonindustrial Private Forest Landowners: A Comparative Study for 10 Southern States of the United States

Journal Article Journal of Forestry · November 1, 2020 Changes in tax codes applicable to timberland investments can affect tax treatment of timber revenues and expenses. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is regarded as the most expansive overhaul of tax codes in the United States since 1986; however, our ... Full text Cite

Effect of working forest conservation easements on surrounding property values

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · September 1, 2020 The hedonic pricing method was applied to examine the effect of working forest conservation easements (WFCEs) on the value of surrounding land parcels in state of Georgia. Data were collected on attributes of WFCEs in 62 counties and 46,580 property sales ... Full text Cite

A comparative analysis of five forest certification programs

Journal Article Forests · August 1, 2020 International expansion of forest certification programs has occurred over the last three decades. Both public and private organizations have shown increased interest in becoming certified by one or more forest certification bodies, to assure the public th ... Full text Cite

Timberland Transaction Costs and Due Diligence: A Literature Review and Assessment of Research Needs

Journal Article International Forestry Review · June 1, 2020 In the last three decades, purchases and sales of large timberland estates have become a common event worldwide. Timberland investments generally entail the purchase of land containing (or suitable for growing) merchantable timber in order to obtain future ... Full text Cite

Towards a characterization of working forest conservation easements in Georgia, USA

Journal Article Forests · June 1, 2020 We examine the attributes of working forest conservation easements in Georgia. Easement contracts and baseline reports are inspected to investigate easement themes, land use types, recreation opportunities, hydrological features, and forest management acti ... Full text Cite

The time-varying role of timberland in long-term, mixed-asset portfolios under the mean conditional value-at-risk framework

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · April 1, 2020 We investigate the time-varying role of timberland in a mixed-asset portfolio using 15-year rolling windows. Before running portfolio optimizations, we first test normality of return distributions of selected assets including private- and public-equity tim ... Full text Cite

Return and information transmission of public and private timberland markets in the United States

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · April 1, 2020 We examine risk-return characteristics and information transition dynamics of public- and private-equity timberland investments. We first make adjustments in the return data for the influence of financial leverage, management fees, geographic distribution, ... Full text Cite

Private-equity commercial real estate, timberland, and farmland: Market integration and information transition dynamics

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · January 1, 2020 Using data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), we examine market integration of commercial real estate and timberland–farmland assets via the Fama–MacBeth two-step approach under the intertemporal capital asset pricing ... Full text Cite

The terms foresters and planners in the United States use to infer sustainability in forest management plans: A survey analysis

Journal Article Sustainability (Switzerland) · January 1, 2020 Sustainable forest management is important for advancing sustainable societal development. Effective communication plays a major role in how goals and objectives are achieved. This study aims to assess how sustainability is considered by people who develop ... Full text Cite

Timberland investments in the United States: A review and prospects

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · December 1, 2019 In this study, 68 peer-reviewed journal articles in timberland investments in the United States published after 1980 are reviewed. Prior to the synthesis, the history of modern timberland investments, investment vehicles and return indices are summarized. ... Full text Cite

The economic contribution of the world's forest sector

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · March 1, 2019 This study estimated economic contribution of the global forest sector to national economies by calculating value added, employment, and labor income. Input-output models were developed for 58 countries using 2011 IMPLAN model and data to estimate the dire ... Full text Cite

Assessing the risk and return of optimal portfolios of U.S. timberland and farmland

Journal Article Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management · January 1, 2019 Using synthetic returns for timberland in the U.S. South and NCREIF data for farm crops from 2000:Q1 to 2016:Q4, we build efficient frontiers under the mean-conditional valueat-risk (CVaR) framework. Recognizing the availability of the investable universe ... Full text Cite

Timberland investment under both financial and biophysical risk

Journal Article Land Economics · January 1, 2019 We extend real options analysis of timberland investments to examine a combination of financial and biophysical risk effects on optimal investment strategies in the southeastern United States. Results show that, despite a slight downward drift in price, ex ... Full text Cite

Review of the effects of conservation easements on surrounding property values

Journal Article Journal of Forestry · November 3, 2018 This paper reviews the effects of conservation easements (CEs) on surrounding property values. From the literature, key variable characteristics of CEs that influence surrounding property value are development potential, proximity, and the effect of forest ... Full text Cite

Impact of forest-related conservation easements on contiguous and surrounding property values

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · August 1, 2018 We apply the hedonic pricing method to analyze the effects of conservation easements (CEs) on surrounding vacant land parcel prices within the Metropolitan Atlanta Statistical Area (MASA). First, we collected data on forest related CEs in 30 counties in MA ... Full text Cite

On the determinants of transaction frequency of institutional commercial timberland properties in the United States

Journal Article Land Economics · May 1, 2018 Using property-level data (1987Q1-2015Q4) from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, this study examines the determinants of transaction frequency of institutional commercial timberland properties in the United States. Controlling for ... Full text Cite

Burning wood pellets for US electricity generation? A regime switching analysis

Journal Article Energy Economics · June 1, 2017 Applying a regime switching model under the theoretic framework of real options, we inspect the optimal timing boundaries for coal and coal mixed wood pellets as two alternative fuels for a power plant in Georgia, United States. Results indicate that cofir ... Full text Cite

Long-term event study of timber real estate investment trust conversions

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · May 1, 2017 The long-term financial performance of four timber real estate investment trust (REIT) conversions in the United States is evaluated by an event study with one-, two-, and three-year event windows. Three types of benchmarks are used in gauging the abnormal ... Full text Cite

Investment returns of US commercial timberland: Insights into index construction methods and results

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · January 1, 2017 This study compares different index construction methods of timberland investment returns and evaluates the resulting indices by various asset pricing models. In addition to various NCRIEF indices, I include a de-smoothed index that attempts to restore pro ... Full text Cite

Comparing the financial performance of timber REITs and other REITs

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · November 1, 2016 The return and risk characteristics of three types of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in the United States are evaluated by the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedast ... Full text Cite

Investor sentiment and timberland investment returns

Journal Article Forest Products Journal · January 1, 2016 We use the orthogonalized investor sentiment index formed by M. Baker and J. Wurgler (J. Financ. 61(4):1645-1680, 2006) to examine the relationship between investor sentiment and timberland investment returns. The empirical results show that current invest ... Full text Cite

Transaction-based Timberland investment returns

Journal Article Land Economics · January 1, 2016 Using property-level data of 1987 quarter 1-2014 quarter 2 provided by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), transaction-based timberland indices are constructed via the Heckman procedure. Results show that liquidity of priva ... Full text Cite

Co-firing coal with wood pellets for U.S. electricity generation: A real options analysis

Journal Article Energy Policy · June 1, 2015 In contrast to EU, U.S. electric utilities are not employing the bioenergy technology of co-firing wood pellets with coal. This difference in employment patterns is explored within a real options analysis (ROA) for possible U.S. utilization of wood pellets ... Full text Cite

Illiquidity and risk of commercial timberland assets in the United States

Journal Article Journal of Forest Economics · April 1, 2015 Using the BDS independent test and the bootstrapping method, this paper examines the relationship between return and risk of various timberland investment vehicles and the holding period. Results from the BDS test reject the null hypothesis of independent ... Full text Cite

A pure-play timberland return index based on securitized timber firms

Journal Article Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management · January 1, 2015 Based on asset values of different business segments, I derive a pure-play timberland return index using monthly data of public timber firms for the 2010-2014 period. Re- turns on public timber firms are first unleveraged and then regressed on the holding ... Cite

Pricing commercial timberland returns in the united states

Chapter · January 1, 2015 Commercial timberland assets have attracted more attention in recent decades.One unique feature of this asset class roots in the biological growth, which is independent of traditional financial markets. Using both parametric and nonparametric approaches, w ... Full text Cite

Portfolio diversification through timber real estate investment trusts: A cointegration analysis

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · January 1, 2015 Investors who are interested in long-term investments have regarded timberland as an advantageous asset class. The formation of timber real estate investment trusts (REITs) has offered both individual and institutional investors more options to diversify t ... Full text Cite

Evaluating timberland investment opportunities in the United States: A real options analysis

Journal Article Forest Science · January 1, 2015 In recent years, timberland prices in the United States have been chased to an unprecedentedly high-level owing to the restructure of the forest industry, whereas stumpage prices have been flat or declining over the same time period, primarily due to the e ... Full text Cite

Assessing forestry-related assets with the intertemporal capital asset pricing model

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · January 1, 2015 The intertemporal capital asset pricing model is used to assess the risk-return relationship between forestry-related assets and innovations in state variables using quarterly returns from 1988Q1 to 2011Q4. Market excess returns and innovations in the smal ... Full text Cite

Assessing the role of U.S. timberland assets in a mixed portfolio under the mean-conditional value at risk framework

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · January 1, 2015 This study examines the role of U.S. timberland assets in a mixed portfolio from the risk perspective. Under the mean-conditional value at risk (M-CVaR) optimization framework, the efficient frontier of the mixed portfolio is dramatically improved after ad ... Full text Cite

Pricing timberland assets in the United States by the arbitrage pricing theory

Journal Article Forest Science · October 2, 2014 Using quarterly data (1988Q1–2011Q4), we assess the financial performance of timberland investments in the United States by the arbitrage pricing theory. Private-equity timberland returns are approximated by various indices reported by the National Council ... Full text Cite

An index for logging cost changes across the US South

Journal Article Journal of Forestry · January 1, 2014 A timely, accurate indicator of changes in logging costs would establish a baseline against which logging contractors could compare their own costs and would offer buyers and sellers of timber a reference for shifts in cut and haul rates. Using data from f ... Full text Cite

Assessing the impact of macroeconomic news on the U.S. forest products industry portfolio across business cycles: 1963-2010

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · March 1, 2013 Macroeconomic news is viewed as the source of systematic risk in financial markets. This study investigated the impact of macroeconomic news on the returns and volatilities of the lumber and paper industry portfolios in the United States over 1963-2010. Us ... Full text Cite

Investor attention and abnormal performance of timberland investments in the United States

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · March 1, 2013 We use Internet search volume of timberland related terms to test investor attention on timberland asset pricing. With an innovate measure of investor attention based on Internet search volume, we investigate the empirical implication of Internet informati ... Full text Cite

Timberland return drivers and timberland returns and risks: A simulation approach

Journal Article Southern Journal of Applied Forestry · February 1, 2013 Timberland assets exhibit several unique characteristics that are attractive to investors. In this study, we examined the three return drivers of timberland investments-timber price change, land value appreciation, and biological growth, in two settings. T ... Full text Cite

Assessing the inflation hedging ability of timberland assets in the United States

Journal Article Forest Science · February 1, 2013 Inflation hedging is one of the unique features of timberland assets that attract timberland investors. This study uses Fisher hypothesis and capital asset pricing model under inflation to analyze how effectively private- and public-equity timberland asset ... Full text Cite

An econometric analysis of US exports of forest products

Journal Article Forest Products Journal · January 1, 2013 Using cointegration analyses, we examined the econometric relationship between the US exports of selected forest products (roundwood, sawnwood, and paper and paper board) and a group of microeconomic factors. Overall, we found a positive impact of economic ... Full text Cite

Evaluating market efficiency of the US forest industry

Journal Article Forest Products Journal · January 1, 2013 The market efficiency of the US forest industry had evolved over the past decade. In this study, the entropy measurement, an econophysic approach, was applied to quantify the informational efficiency of timber real estate investment trusts (REITs), wood, f ... Full text Cite

Valuing a timber harvest contract as a high-dimensional American call option via least-squares Monte Carlo simulation

Journal Article Natural Resource Modeling · January 1, 2013 Industrial timberland ownership in the United States has shifted substantially in the last 20 years. Having sold their fee-owned timberlands, forest products companies relied heavily on the open market for raw timber. To reduce their exposure to market ris ... Full text Cite

Can timber hedge against inflation? An analysis of timber prices in the us south

Journal Article Forest Products Journal · January 1, 2011 The US South is one of the world's leading timber producing regions. This article analyzes stumpage prices, the price a landowner receives for standing timber product, without the influence of growth or consideration of land price. Under the framework of F ... Full text Cite

Modeling and forecasting pine sawtimber stumpage prices in the US South by various time series models

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · October 25, 2010 Among the three timberland return drivers (biological growth, timber price, and land price), timber price remains the most unpredictable. It affects not only periodic dividends from timber sales but also timber production strategies embedded in timberland ... Full text Cite

Evaluating the financial performance of timberland investments in the United States

Journal Article Forest Science · October 1, 2010 Timberland properties have gained increasing attention in recent decades. The attractiveness of this asset primarily lies in its unique feature-the biological growth, which is independent of traditional financial markets. Using both parametric and nonparam ... Cite

Mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. forest products industry: Motives, financing, and impacts

Chapter · February 1, 2009 The U.S. forest products industry consists of the paper sector, lumber sector, and furniture sector. It has been one of the primary manufacturing industries in terms of total value of shipment and total number of employment. However, its financial performa ... Cite

Event analysis of the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the financial performance of the U.S. forest products industry

Journal Article Forest Policy and Economics · April 1, 2008 The U.S. forest products industry has witnessed an unprecedented period of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in recent years. In this study, the impact of 70 M&As from 1990 to 2004 on the financial performance of 85 publicly traded forest firms was evaluated ... Full text Cite