Responsiveness of Rural and Urban Land Uses to Land Rent Determinants in the U.S. South

Ricardian and von Thünen land rent models are combined into a single land use share model including farm, forest, and urban land uses. The land share model is applied to the Southern United States, and elasticities are extracted that measure land share response to changes in population, income, land values, prices, and costs in counties with different degrees of urbanization. The study explores the effect of treating either rural or urban land as a residual use. While this practice is common in existing land use studies, it is found to significantly affect parameter estimates in this county-level analysis. (JEL R14)