We explore how a landowner’s bid to enroll in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is influenced by his parcel’s designation as a Conservation Priority Area (CPA). A theoretical model of a landowner’s optimal bid is presented, and we demonstrate the ambiguity in a landowner’s optimal...

By distinguishing between the decision to participate in the conservation reserve program (CRP) and the decision for whole-farm vs. part-farm participation, we model participation as separate binary decisions. Our results suggest the farm characteristics and other factors affect the decision to...

While agricultural land preservation programs seek to maximize the number of acres, to preserve productive farms, to preserve contiguous farms, and to preserve threatened farms, they are often evaluated solely on the number of acres preserved. Preserved parcels in four Maryland counties were...

This study presents an empirical model of the impacts of agricultural and urban returns on farmland value. The model allows the marginal impacts of parcel characteristics to vary nonlinearly over space with an endogenous smooth transition between urban fringe and rural areas. The estimation...

This study investigates gender differences in land ownership and use in northern Ethiopia. Female-headed households have 23% smaller owned landholdings and 54% smaller operational landholdings. Household endowments of nonland productive inputs are important, but decomposition analysis shows that...

Whether the negative relationship between farm size and crop productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in Africa is of considerable policy relevance. Plot-level data from Rwanda point toward constant returns to scale and a strong negative relationship between farm size...

We study how increases in wealth from rapid appreciation of farmland influenced farmer decisions to borrow, buy land, and expand. Exploiting periods of high and low appreciation and a panel data model that allows for correlation between prior growth trends and the share of land owned, we find...