The introduction in Ecuador of a primary irrigation infrastructure into a communal setting where land users did not fully control the land and had effectively no access to credit, produced a sell off of nearly all irrigable lands. The change in land reservation prices between buyers and sellers is analyzed.

This paper aims to analyze the effects of paddy-field consolidation projects by using the stochastic model. Empirical results showed that the degree of effects, realized as a rise in rental rate and rental-area, vary in each region and that several factors influencing the project effects can be evaluated quantitatively.

This report is a summary of the data contained on the farmland sales portion of the Minnesota Land Economics (MLE) web site (http://www.apec.umn.edu/landeconomics) as of April 29, 2004. It is formally reissued each Spring, as new sales data become available. We no longer distribute a separate farm real estate report in the Minnesota Agricultural Economist (now the Minnesota Applied Economist: http://www.apec.umn.edu/MnApEc).

The study develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the allocation of conservation funds via selectively offering incentive payments to farmers for enrolling in one of two mutually exclusive agricultural conservation programs: retiring land from production or changing farming practices on land that remains in production. We investigate how the existence of a pre-fixed budget allocation between the programs affects the amounts of environmental benefits obtainable under alternative policy implementation schemes.

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Farmland values, cash rental rates, and federal farm program payments steadily increased in the Northern Plains from 1991 - 2001. Econometric models are used to examine the impacts of Federal farm payments on cropland values and rental rates, statewide and regional,in South Dakota during this time period.

Forestland is a composite good, the price of which varies with its characteristics, such as its ability to produce timber and its proximity to markets. Sales of predominately forested land in southeastern Oklahoma were examined to better understand and quantify the influences of physical and spatial characteristics on sales prices.

This paper uses a two-good specific factors model to derive a relationship between international trade, land degradation, and welfare. Because developing countries enjoy comparative advantage in agriculture, they will export agricultural goods. We found that trade could lower steady state land quality and welfare. We conclude that poor resource management undermines the conventional gains from globalization.

Two reduced-form, econometric models of developed land area were estimated with the data from the USDA’'s National Resource Inventory and numerous other sources for 49 states during 1982-1997. In these linear and semi-quadratic fixed-effects models, developed land area is smaller where the average real gas price or conservation- reserve-program payment per enrolled acre during the previous five years is higher. This area also decreases as the average share of lower-house Democrats or real per-capita agricultural and mining production during the previous five years grows.

Benefit transfer has been an important, practical policy tool appealing to government agencies, especially when time or budget is constrained. However, the existing literature fails to support convergent validity of benefit transfer using the stated-preference method. This empirical study examines the convergent validity of benefit transfer using the choice modeling method, a potentially promising technique compatible with the heterogeneity of the transfer contexts.