| Interest in the economic impacts of research and development (R&D) among forest economists is of relatively recent vintage when compared with the long history of such inquiries in agricultural economics. In contrast to the literature in agricultural economics, which can be traced to the seminal works of Schultz (1953) and Griliches (1958), such work in forest economics was not of widespread interest until 1979 when the USDA Forest Service responded to the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 by initiating an examination of policy concerning public support for R&D (Callaham, 1981). In 1980 the Forest Service began a national program to develop methods for the economic evaluation of R&D in forest product technologies... |
