Production projection and foreign trade analysis of forest products industry

The position of forest products industry in the national and international trade is very important. Forest products industry has back and forth connections with many sectors and it can be an input for these sectors, in this respect, commercially importance of this industry comes to the fore, too. When it is mentioned about forest products, a lot of mixture of products come to mind. In this study, the forest products which are obtained from FAOSTAT database and having useful data sets for the economic analysis examined in detail. The study is divided into two parts, in first part the production and foreign trade values of forest products examined in specific years using table and graphs and the impact of the countries on these products is tried to show with the year 2014 values. Likewise the EU (European Union) countries are also evaluated within themselves. In the second part, based on the forest products produced between 1993-2014 years in Turkey and Germany, it is aimed to estimate the production quantity of these products till the year 2023. Multiple regression analysis and artificial neural networks method were used for the estimation processes and it is determined that which method is preferable mathematically. In both methods, the same independent variables used for estimation of a product production. When choosing the independent variables, the model which gives the best coefficient of determination was used. 10 products and 9 independent variables for Turkey, 10 products and 7 independent variables for Germany were used to do estimating processes. Key Words: Forest products, Production, Multiple regression analysis, Artificial neural networks, Turkey, Germany, European Union