Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Northern Forest (F): Policy Alternatives

Jones, Andrew, Lan...

Case

Northern Forest (F): Policy Alternatives

Jones, Andrew; Landel, Robert D.

OM-1156 | Published November 30, 2004 | 3 pages Case

Collection: Darden School of Business

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The focus of this case is on the policy alternative choices for preventing boom-and-bust behavior in the Northern Forest sawmill industry. A simulation analysis is also accessible for faculty to use to demonstrate the results of various policy alternatives. Landowners, sawmill owners, government officials, and environmentalists do not want sawmill demand to "overshoot" the productive capacity of the forest resources, a problem that the region had experienced approximately a century earlier. Students use systems-thinking skills (analysis of reference modes of behaviors, causal-loop mapping, and stock-flow mapping) to create their casual hypotheses of the underlying-systems structure. The case is based on the article, "Resource Sustainability in Commodity Market Systems," System Dynamics Review Summer 2002.