The impacts of illegal logging acts on China’s wood products exports: univariate and cointegration intervention analyses

Illegal logging and associated trade in illegally sourced wood products are major problems and global issues for forest deforestation, environmental damage, and sustainable development. This paper applies univariate and cointegration intervention analyses to investigate the impacts of three illegal logging acts enacted by United States, European Union, and Australia on China's exports, the largest manufacturer and exporter of wood-based panel products worldwide. We find that China's export quantity effects of all three acts are negative. Similarly large changes in wood-based panel export quantities to United States and European Union have occurred, while smaller, and statistically insignificant by using the univariate approach, changes have been found for particle board and plywood to Australia. Particle board's export quantity effects are generally larger in magnitude in percentage change than fibreboard and plywood.