Gang Lu

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

I completed my PhD in Forestry at Michigan State University, where my dissertation examined the socioeconomic impacts of China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program on participating households and local communities.

Before joining SLU, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University. There, I studied the effects of forest and conservation policies on timber production and assessed the technical efficiency of carbon-oriented and multifunctional forest-management scenarios.

My academic background combines forest economics, environmental and natural-resource economics, policy evaluation and quantitative analysis.

My current research examines how changes in forest policy, forest management and wood production affect forest-product markets, international trade and climate outcomes.

A central focus of my work at SLU is market-mediated leakage. I investigate whether reductions in Swedish wood production are offset by increased production in other countries and how such market responses influence the overall climate effects of forest policy.

I analyse international production and trade patterns to identify the countries and producers most likely to respond to changes in Swedish supply. This research connects market responses with changes in forest carbon, harvested-wood-product carbon and the use of wood in place of more greenhouse-gas-intensive materials.

My research methods include panel data analysis, stochastic frontier analysis, technical-efficiency measurement, international trade analysis and forest-sector modelling.

PhD in Forestry, Michigan State University, 2023