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Abstract
This investigation of price-determining infbuences in the market for irrigated land was
motivated originally by a presumption that one way to evaluate land-investment alternatives,
such as public expenditures for irrigation, would be to compare the present price
of nonirrigated land in the market with an "expected" market price after investments
are made. The models were developed to aid in estimating a current market value for
land that is comparable, in the value sense, to the price of such land after capital investment.
In an attempt to test variants of the theory that a certain proportion of the expected
gross receipts is capitalized into land values, that is, that land values can be
estimated on the basis of gross farm income, the author has constructed both time-series
and cross-sectional models. The time-series portion of the analysis was published in the
May 1957 issue of the Journal of Farm Economics (4),1 "Are Land Prices Too High:
A Note on Behavior in the Land Market." The cross-sectional models dealing with this
problem are presented here with a unique approach and interesting methodology.