IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/umdrwp/42714.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Incidence of U.S. Agricultural Subsidies on Farmland Rental Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Kirwan, Barrett E.

Abstract

Each year U.S. farmers receive more subsidies than needy families receive through welfare assistance or post-secondary students receive through student aid grants. Yet, who benefits from agricultural subsidies is an open question. Economic theory predicts the entire subsidy incidence should be on the farmland owners. Since non-farmers own nearly half of all farmland, this implies that a substantial portion of all subsidies accrue to non-farmers while a significant share of all farmers receive no benefits. Using a complementary set of policy quasiexperiments, I find that farmers who rent the land they cultivate capture 75 percent of the subsidy, leaving just 25 percent for landowners. This finding contradicts the prediction from neoclassical models. The standard prediction may not hold due to less than perfect competition in the farmland rental market; the share captured by landowners increases with local measures of competitiveness in the farm land rental market.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirwan, Barrett E., 2008. "The Incidence of U.S. Agricultural Subsidies on Farmland Rental Rates," Working Papers 42714, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:umdrwp:42714
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.42714
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/42714/files/08-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.42714?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell L. Lamb & Jason Henderson, 2000. "FAIR Act Implications for Land Values in the Corn Belt," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 22(1), pages 102-119.
    2. Randy Rosso & Melissa Faux, 2003. "Characteristics of Food Stamp Households: Fiscal Year 2002," Mathematica Policy Research Reports a0ac4d9aec734a3c903b4444b, Mathematica Policy Research.
    3. Orden, David & Paarlberg, Robert & Roe, Terry, 1999. "Policy Reform in American Agriculture," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226632643, October.
    4. Michael J. Roberts & Barrett Kirwan & Jeffrey Hopkins, 2003. "The Incidence of Government Program Payments on Agricultural Land Rents: The Challenges of Identification," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(3), pages 762-769.
    5. John Rosine & Peter Helmberger, 1974. "A Neoclassical Analysis of the U. S. Farm Sector, 1948–1970," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 56(4), pages 717-729.
    6. Guth, Werner & Schmittberger, Rolf & Schwarze, Bernd, 1982. "An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 367-388, December.
    7. Lucas W. Davis, 2004. "The Effect of Health Risk on Housing Values: Evidence from a Cancer Cluster," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1693-1704, December.
    8. H. Peyton Young & Mary A. Burke, 2001. "Competition and Custom in Economic Contracts: A Case Study of Illinois Agriculture," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 559-573, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johan Swinnen & Alessandro Olper & Senne Vandevelde, 2021. "From unfair prices to unfair trading practices: Political economy, value chains and 21st century agri‐food policy," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(5), pages 771-788, September.
    2. L. Latruffe & T. Doucha & Ch. Le Mouël & T. Medonos & V. Voltr, 2008. "Capitalisation of government support in agricultural land prices in the Czech Republic," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 54(10), pages 451-460.
    3. Ahearn, Mary Clare & Collender, Robert N. & Diao, Xinshen & Harrington, David H. & Hoppe, Robert A. & Korb, Penelope J. & Makki, Shiva S. & Morehart, Mitchell J. & Roberts, Michael J. & Roe, Terry L. , 2004. "Decoupled Payments In A Changing Policy Setting," Agricultural Economic Reports 33981, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Baffes, John & De Gorter, Harry, 2005. "Disciplining agricultural support through decoupling," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3533, The World Bank.
    5. Luther Tweeten & Carl Zulauf, 2008. "Farm price and income policy: lessons from history," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 145-160.
    6. Lucija Muehlenbachs & Elisheba Spiller & Christopher Timmins, 2015. "The Housing Market Impacts of Shale Gas Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3633-3659, December.
    7. H Peyton Young, 2014. "The Evolution of Social Norms," Economics Series Working Papers 726, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Michael Seiler, 2014. "The Effect of Perceived Lender Characteristics and Market Conditions on Strategic Mortgage Defaults," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 256-270, February.
    9. Giuseppe Attanasi & Aurora García-Gallego & Nikolaos Georgantzís & Aldo Montesano, 2015. "Bargaining over Strategies of Non-Cooperative Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-26, August.
    10. Styan, Jacob & Boerngen, Maria A. & Barrowclough, Michael J., 2021. "Factors Influencing Increased Usage of Cash Rent Leases in Illinois," Journal of the ASFMRA, American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, vol. 2021.
    11. Robison, Lindon J. & Hanson, Steven D., 1995. "Social Capital and Economic Cooperation," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(1), pages 43-58, July.
    12. Anne Corcos & Yorgos Rizopoulos, 2011. "Is prosocial behavior egocentric? The “invisible hand” of emotions," Post-Print halshs-01968213, HAL.
    13. Burks, Stephen V. & Carpenter, Jeffrey P. & Verhoogen, Eric, 2003. "Playing both roles in the trust game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 195-216, June.
    14. Seema Kacker & Tin Aung & Dominic Montagu & David Bishai, 2021. "Providers preferences towards greater patient health benefit is associated with higher quality of care," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 271-294, September.
    15. Mazen Hassan & Sarah Mansour & Stefan Voigt & May Gadallah, 2022. "When Syria was in Egypt’s land: Egyptians cooperate with Syrians, but less with each other," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(3), pages 337-362, June.
    16. Francis Tsiboe & Jesse Tack, 2022. "Utilizing Topographic and Soil Features to Improve Rating for Farm‐Level Insurance Products," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(1), pages 52-69, January.
    17. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2009. "Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 592-612, March.
    18. Jerzy Michalek & Pavel Ciaian & d’Artis Kancs, 2014. "Capitalization of the Single Payment Scheme into Land Value: Generalized Propensity Score Evidence from the European Union," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 90(2), pages 260-289.
    19. Sylvie Thoron, 2016. "Morality Beyond Social Preferences: Smithian Sympathy, Social Neuroscience and the Nature of Social Consciousness [La moralité au delà des préférences sociales. La sympathie Smithienne, les neurosc," Post-Print hal-01645043, HAL.
    20. Liqi Zhu & Gerd Gigerenzer & Gang Huangfu, 2013. "Psychological Traces of China's Socio-Economic Reforms in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-6, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:umdrwp:42714. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/daumdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.