Abstract

Forest economics is an infant discipline in India, and most research in this field have been confined to transactions that take place after the trees are harvested, i.e., forest products economics or raw material economics. Economic questions concerning the growing of trees, i.e., forest management economics, have received very little attention. Among the factors influencing growth, pests and diseases are believed to cause substantial loss of the potential yield of forest plantations. While some of these losses are obvious without any economic analysis, the seriousness of many others are not recognised due to lack of pertinent data. Even when the quantum of loss has been estimated in terms of wood volume, economic analysis is often handicapped for want of tree growth statistics. In addition, the time span required to produce harvestable trees (for timber) is very much longer than that for any other production process, which creates situations peculiar to forestry, in