Dear colleagues, The joint proposal of Berhard Moehring, Bjoern Seintsch and myself for a session of unit 4.05.01 on ‘International compatibility and benchmarking of economic data from monitoring, reporting and accounting’ within the upcoming IUFRO 125th Anniversary Congress in Freiburg, Germany, 19-22 September, 2017 has been accepted. Session outline: Economic data require prudent assessment in order to allow for sound comparisons and fruitful benchmarking exercises, standards and definitions being a pre-requisite not only in terms of availability but also in terms of consistent application. For instance, cut-offs or the use of surrogates may introduce severe biases. The same unit of measurement is a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition for any kind of trade-off-considerations. Merely assuming the consistency of data provided by different sources or referring to different kinds of values may in fact trigger severe misjudgements and thus compromise research efforts. Respective issues in accounting are to be addressed at the level of bookkeeping, national accounting and international reporting alike, referring to frameworks such as forest accountancy data networks, IAS 41, IEEAF and FRA. The scope of contributions comprises timber production as well as the provision of non-wood goods and forest services. The session provides an opportunity for an international assessment, synthesis and evaluation in regard to the availability, documentation and quality of economic data on forestry as well as the identification of possible amendments from a scientific point of view. It is intended to integrate efforts like the ones of the DACH-initiative and the EUROSTAT task force on forest accounting and to carry on previous discussions which took place under the umbrella of unit 4.05.00 in a specifically focused way. Tentative topics of contributions: (1) Benchmarking based on accounting data: what forestry may learn from agriculture (2) International comparability of IEEAF sector statistics (3) DACH 3.0: the significance of forest accountancy data networks for sector statistics – an international comparison in regard to the DACH-region (4) Reliability and compatibility of fair values according to IAS 41 (5) How to establish monetary values for non-wood goods and forest services? An international comparison of approaches applied in Forest Resource Assessment. The call for abstracts is now open and respective contributions may be submitted till November 30, 2016 (http://iufro2017.com/call-for-abstracts) Additional submissions referring to topics 4 and 5 are especially encouraged. Best regards, Walter Sekot Institute of Agricultural and Forestry Economics University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna Feistmantelstrasse 4, 1180 Wien, Austria Phone: +43-1-47654-73321 Fax: +43-1-47654-73309 mobile: +43-664-8453985