TY - JOUR T1 - Transaction-Based Timberland Investment Returns JF - Land Economics JO - Land Econ SP - 187 LP - 201 DO - 10.3368/le.92.1.187 VL - 92 IS - 1 AU - Bin Mei Y1 - 2016/02/01 UR - http://le.uwpress.org/content/92/1/187.abstract N2 - Using property-level data of 1987 quarter 1–2014 quarter 2 provided by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), transaction-based timberland indices are constructed via the Heckman procedure. Results show that liquidity of private-equity timberland assets varies with business cycles; variance of transaction-based timberland indices is twice as large as that of the appraisal-based NCREIF Timberland Index; the role of private-equity timberland in a mixed portfolio is overstated by using the appraisal-based index; and the average of estimated ask and bid prices well captures the mean price of identified timberland sales, although timberland sellers reserve higher prices than buyers. (JEL C34, Q23) ER -