Drivers of Agricultural Land Prices in Terms of Different Functions of Rural Areas in Poland

Abstract

According to many researches, decoupled CAP subsidies capitalised on land prices. Most studies on land prices carried out in Europe relate to the SPS system and marginal changes in land values are noted as a result of the subsidising of agriculture. In the SAPS system, used in the new EU-12 Member States, these issues have not been sufficiently investigated. An attempt is made to fill these gaps by studying the drivers of land values in a leading agricultural region of Poland based on a sample of 653 transactions from 2010-2013. The aim is to establish what land use values, amenities and payments for public goods contribute to land values in the SAPS system. The hypothesis is proposed that the key factors for land value are location-specific factors identified according to the economic functions of a given area. Thus, four log-linear models of hedonic regression are estimated (using GLS) for different types of rural areas. The models employ both parcel-level attributes and agricultural policy variables. Results include the observation that single area payments contribute now to land value mainly in the peripheral areas and payments for public goods under SAPS decapitalize the value of land, because they do not compensate for the opportunity costs related to alternative ways of deriving rent from the land.