The fuelwood market in Greece: An empirical approach

Wood has been since ancient times the basic household heating medium. Nowadays, wood remains the primary energy source in rural areas of developing countries, mainly in Africa. In Greece, the domestic demand of fuelwood is relied mainly on the fuelwood domestic supply. Especially, during the post-war period the domestic supply satisfies adequately the domestic demand, eliminating the role of imports. esent study surveys the long-run relationship between the fuelwood prices of different forest species in order to determine the role of the special market conditions in their price formation. In addition, the error correction model is estimated in order to survey the direction of the Granger causality among the prices of the fuelwood forest species. The implementation of the impulse response analysis and the variance decomposition confirmed that coniferous and beech fuelwood producer price may account for the volatility of the oak fuelwood producer price. This result may contribute greatly to the conservation of oak forest, an important carbon storage forest ecosystem.