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Abstract
This paper serves to document the REPA Forest Trade Model – a global model of forest
trade that consists of ten products across two horizontal layers in a vertical chain. The model
includes 20 regions: Five Canadian regions (Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, Alberta, BC
Interior and BC Coast), three U.S. regions (South, North and West), China, Japan, Rest of Asia,
Chile, Rest of Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Rest of Europe,
and the Rest of the World. The underlying economic theory upon which the model is built is
discussed in detail; we demonstrate that changes in region-level forest management policies
(e.g., related to harvests) and/or trade policies have a larger impact on income transfers among
regions and agents than they have on global welfare. The objective function and constraints to
the quadratic programming implementation of the model are developed, and the method used to
calibrate the model to existing bilateral trade flows via positive mathematical programming is
discussed. Finally, the data sources and actual data are provided, as are the corrections to
shipping and handling costs needed to calibrate the model.