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Contribution to Book
Modeling the Determinants of Farmland Values in the United States
The Oxford Handbook of Land Economics (2014)
  • Cynthia J Nickerson, United States Department of Agriculture
  • Wendong Zhang, Ohio State University
Abstract
Farmland has long represented a significant component of both farm sector and farm household assets. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of significant developments in modeling farmland values, with attention to methodological challenges and recent modeling innovations. After outlining the capitalization model that provides the theoretical underpinnings for most farmland value studies, the merits and efficacy of dynamic models using aggregate data, as well as increasingly popular cross-sectional hedonic models that use spatially disaggregate data are presented. Estimation issues in hedonic models are reviewed, with a focus on those deserving special consideration in the context of farmland values such as spatial dependence and heterogeneity and sample selection bias. Promising future research directions include greater use of nonparametric approaches, quasi-experimental designs, panel data analyses, and structural econometric models, which take advantage of spatially explicit farmland values data but avoid the restrictive assumptions of standard spatial lag and spatial error models.
Keywords
  • farmland values,
  • capitalization model,
  • dynamic models,
  • hedonic models,
  • sample selection bias,
  • spatial dependence
Publication Date
July, 2014
Editor
Joshua M. Duke and JunJie Wu
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISBN
9780199763740
DOI
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199763740.013.005
Publisher Statement
Works produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted.
Citation Information
Cynthia J Nickerson and Wendong Zhang. "Modeling the Determinants of Farmland Values in the United States" The Oxford Handbook of Land Economics (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/wendong_zhang/2/