What is the cost of producing cubic metre pine? What is the production function? These questions are challenges although cost accounting has been done for years However, the cost accounting is typically applied at the forest holding level. The life of an individual stand, for example, is too long to cope with. 

In case, the national forest inventory as well as stumpage price and cost statistics are accurate, return on forest ownership by tree species provides a proxy for economic results and comparison. The solutions are extensions of the return on forest ownership results in production for ten years in the statistical service at Natural Resources Institute Finland. The key challenges are the splits of the growing stock e.g. Between non-industrial private forests and the others, between tree species as well as splits of the costs between tree species. A method to split the wood production costs is hard to find. As a proxy, the costs were split using timber sale earnings. 

It turns out that the average returns 1983-2015 have 2.5% for pine, 3.1 for spruce and 2.6 for birch, spruce being the best choice. Surprisingly, with time period 1993-2015 the respective figures were 4.3%, 4.7% and 3.8% and with 1983-1993 negative because of the recession. The recent results of period 2003-2015 turn with 3.7%, 3.5% and 3.3% pine being the best choice. The standard deviations 10.6%, 10.1% and 10.0% hardly differ from each other. In all, spruce might be the best choice in case the sites suit for spruce. In all, the most dominating driver were price ups like in 2007 and lows in 1990s emphasising the well being of the forest industry.