Green Payment Programs and Farmland Prices—An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Research has examined the impact of green payment programs on agricultural and economic outcomes such as agricultural productivity and farm income. However, it is unclear whether these policies are capitalized into farmland prices. This paper provides some of the first evidence on the causal impact of green payment programs on farmland prices based on evidence from Taiwan. Using administrative farmland transactions data with the ordinary least squares (OLS) method and the semi-parametric smooth coefficient model (SCM), we find that green payment programs increase farmland prices by an average of 3.9 percentage points in townships that implemented the policy. Moreover, the program’s effects on farmland prices are not homogenous, varying by farmland size. The magnitude of this effect is more pronounced on rural farmland prices and across quantiles of the farmland size distribution.