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The power-law distribution of agricultural land size

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  • Sherzod B. Akhundjanov
  • Lauren Chamberlain

Abstract

Power-law distributions explain a variety of natural and man-made processes spanning various disciplines including economics and finance. This paper demonstrates that the distribution of agricultural land size in the United States is best described by a power-law distribution. Maximum likelihood estimation is carried out using county-level data of over 3000 observations gathered at five-year intervals by the USDA Census of Agriculture. Our analysis indicates that U.S. agricultural land size is heavy-tailed, that variance estimates generally do not converge, and that the top 5% of agricultural counties account for about 25% of agricultural land between 1997 and 2012. The goodness of fit of power-law distribution is evaluated using likelihood ratio tests and regression-based diagnostics. The power-law distribution of farm size has important implications for the design of more efficient regional and national agricultural policies as counties close to the mean account for little of the cumulative distribution of total agricultural land.

Suggested Citation

  • Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Lauren Chamberlain, 2019. "The power-law distribution of agricultural land size," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(16), pages 3044-3056, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:japsta:v:46:y:2019:i:16:p:3044-3056
    DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2019.1624695
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    Cited by:

    1. Małgorzata Just & Krzysztof Echaust, 2021. "An Optimal Tail Selection in Risk Measurement," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-16, April.
    2. Kimsanova, Barchynai & Herzfeld, Thomas, 2022. "Policy analysis with Melitz-type gravity model: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Alexis Akira Toda, 2020. "Is Gibrat’s “Economic Inequality” lognormal?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2071-2091, November.
    4. Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Tatiana Drugova, 2022. "On the growth process of US agricultural land," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1727-1740, September.
    5. Behzod B. Ahundjanov & Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Botir B. Okhunjanov, 2022. "Power law in COVID‐19 cases in China," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(2), pages 699-719, April.

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