steadily increasing budgets and numbers of scien- 
tists devoted to research on forest management 
problems. They have been assisted by the 1962 
Federal Mcintire-Stennis Act, which authorized the 
Secretary of Agriculture to cooperate with State col- 
leges and universities for the purposes of carrying 
out forest research, including the training of forest 
workers. In 1985, the 16 forestry schools in the 13 
Southern States had total research budgets of al- 
most $12 million, which included $3.5 million of 
Mcintire-Stennis appropriations. The southern 
schools also employed about 90 full-time equivalent 
research scientists in forest management research. 
Several State forestry agencies in the South al- 
so employ staff that perform research functions or 
that fund cooperative research projects with univer- 
sities and consultants. Forest industry performs re- 
search at several locations in the South and cooper- 
ates with forestry schools and Federal experiment 
stations via individual contracts and numerous for- 
est management cooperatives. 
Public and private research efforts cover most 
areas of forest management, as well as forest prod- 
ucts, recreation, and wildlife. Forest Service re- 
search dollars also fund the national forest invento- 
ry programs and publications. State and Federal 
research and education agencies also collect and 
publish general production and trade statistics, as 
well as perform supply and demand analyses such 
as the southern timber study. In fact, collection and 
dissemination of existing information has been an 
increasing role of public forest research/education 
programs. 
Effectiveness 
Timber budgets, a greater scrutiny of public 
planning, and better analytical tools have led to sev- 
eral recent attempts to determine the value of public 
research investments. But evaluating the impacts of 
forest management research is problematic (Lund- 
gren 1981). Detailed production and market data 
required for estimating production functions (inputs 
and outputs) from forestry research are often lack- 
ing. Additionally, forestry typically deals with pro- 
duction processes that involve many diverse inputs 
over time. It also has a stream of diverse, long-term 
market and nonmarket outputs. Assessing the value 
of research is even harder because timelags of 
more than 50 years may occur from when an inno- 
vation is adopted until its full impact is felt. 
62 
Despite the difficulties, several studies have 
evaluated the returns to investments in forest prod- 
ucts research. Virtually all have found large benefit- 
cost ratios and rates of return. For example, Seldon 
(1985) reported rates of return of over 300 percent 
for southern pine softwood plywood research. 
Bengston (1984) reported excellent returns for 
structural particleboard research. Haygreen and 
others (1986) reported annual rates of return of 18 
percent for all U.S. forest products, engineering, 
and marketing research and rates of 26 percent for 
return for aggregate timber-utilization research. 
Forest management research--research direct- 
ed at enhancing the biological or economic produc- 
tivity of forest lands--is an area of evaluation that has 
more recently received attention. Forest manage- 
ment research evaluation comprises a larger per- 
centage of total public research funding than prod- 
ucts and utilization, but it has received considerably 
less attention in terms of its economic impact. This 
is due to several factors. First, unlike many areas of 
forest products research, innovations in the biologi- 
cal aspects of forest management lack direct con- 
sumer markets where they can be easily valued. 
Further, forest products research has an easily 
identifiable group of adopters--profit-maximizing 
companies who maintain direct, daily contact with 
researchers in their areas of interest. In contrast, a 
large percentage of forest management innovations 
are equally applicable to public, industrial, or private 
nonindustrial lands. Each of these ownership class- 
es possesses different ownership and management 
objectives. Objectives also vary widely among the 
nonindustrial landowners. People or firms in differ- 
ent land ownership classes adopt management in- 
novations at widely divergent rates. Finally, deter- 
mining the actual impacts that are attributable to 
new technology rather than other variables (e.g., 
variations in climate, species composition, site, etc.) 
proves difficult at best. Thus the difficulties of identi- 
fying impacts solely attributable to research while 
controlling for divergent objectives and adoption 
patterns have discouraged many analysts from esti- 
mating the impacts of forest management research. 
Regardless of these problems, some studies 
have evaluated returns to investments in forest 
management research. They have found positive 
returns, albeit less than those reported for evalua- 
tions of forest products and utilization innovations. 
Bare and Loveless (1985 unpubl.) estimated inter- 
nal rates of return of 9 to 12 percent for the Regional 
Forest Nutrition Research Program at the University 
of Washington. The range of values reflects varying 
