Since the 2000s, kiln-dried lumber has become increasingly popular in post and beam construction houses, significantly changing the types of lumber required in Japan. Furthermore, the end use of lumber varies depending on its dimensions and wood species. Competing imported wood products also differ substantially. This study develops autoregressive distributed lag models to clarify the factors that determine the price of domestic lumber for house structural members. The results show that the prices of domestic sugi and hinoki lumber are influenced by each other and not by those of competing imported glued laminated timber. Furthermore, hinoki lumber prices are influenced by hinoki sawlog prices, whereas sugi lumber prices are not influenced by sugi sawlog prices over the long-run. This is partially because the end uses of sugi sawlogs and lumber differ substantially from those of hinoki. This study also confirms that domestic lumber prices are not influenced by the housing starts of post and beam houses overall.
Hayashi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.