PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Bert Scholtens
AU  - Laura Spierdijk
TI  - Does Money Grow on Trees? The Diversification Properties of U.S. Timberland Investments
AID  - 10.3368/le.86.3.514
DP  - 2010 Aug 01
TA  - Land Economics
PG  - 514--529
VI  - 86
IP  - 3
4099  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/86/3/514.short
4100  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/86/3/514.full
SO  - Land Econ2010 Aug 01; 86
AB  - This paper quantifies the diversification potential of timberland investments in a mean-variance framework. The starting point is a broad set of benchmark assets represented by various indexes. Including publicly traded timberland investments in the portfolio does not significantly increase mean-variance efficiency. At first sight, U.S. private equity timberland seems to improve the mean-variance frontier, even if the portfolio already contains a forestry and paper equity index. However, after removing the appraisal smoothing bias from the raw timberland data, there is much less evidence that private equity timberland investments increase mean-variance efficiency. (JEL C14)