This study compares the management performance of timber production among three management systems in Nepal: private forestry, community forestry with collective management, and community forestry with centralized management. While collective management relies entirely on community labour for the whole management, centralized management uses community labour for the protection of forests and hired labour for silvicultural operations, for example weeding, pruning, and thinning. We found that collective community management is less costly for the protection of planted trees but allocates less labour for the management of trees than private management. We also found that centralized management of natural forests leads to higher revenue and profit than collective management. These findings support the hypothesis that, while collective management is more efficient than private management for the protection of trees due to effective mutual supervision, profit-seeking private management or centralized management is more efficient than collective management for silvicultural operations due to superior work incentives. This study, however, failed to compare efficiency of private and centralized management.