Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Modelling the Historical Consolidation of Family Farms Through Time

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。这项研究回答了理论经济学中的一个重要问题-像农业这样看似竞争激烈的行业是如何被少数企业主导的。 始于1863年的《宅基地法》授予美国西部300万农民160至640英亩的农田。该法案从根本上重塑了美国西部的人口和农业构成，被广泛认为是美国历史上最具影响力的土地法之一。 然而，由于缺乏适当的详细数据，该法案的几个重要方面，包括其对以后几年农场合并的影响，尚未得到研究。 本研究将收集、整理、合并数百万份土地交易记录和个体所有者特征，并利用这些数据来研究所有者为什么选择宅基地或购买分配给他们的土地，以及所有权或宅基地决策如何影响20世纪的农场合并。 这项研究的结果不仅将解释为什么竞争性产业，如农业，变成非竞争性产业，从而为竞争政策提供重要的投入。 这将有助于改善美国经济的运作，从而提高经济增长率。 本研究使用四个项目来分析在堪萨斯购买或购买宅基地的决定背后的机制，以及该决定对一系列未来结果的因果影响。第一个项目预测定居者决定购买或宅基地的基础上，在农场一级的土地特性;第二个项目研究选择到购买和宅基地的基础上异质生产函数;第三个项目使用多期结构模型估计宅基地创造的期权价值，而最后一个项目则探讨了决定宅基地对随后的农场合并率和方法的影响。本研究发展一个内生性合并的结构性产业组织模式。在这个过程中，它涉及到农业合并的经济学水平合并的产业组织文献。 19世纪70年代的农业市场以许多生产同质农产品的小农场为特征，这些农场在投入和产出方面都是价格接受者。本研究建立并估计一个内生合并的竞争模型来解释农场合并。 这项研究的结果不仅将解释为什么竞争性产业成为非竞争性产业，从而为竞争政策提供重要的投入。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This research answers an important question in theoretical economics---how a seemingly competitive industry like agriculture comes to be dominated by a few firms. The Homestead Act, beginning in 1863, granted 3 million farmers 160 to 640-acre plots of farmland in the western part of the United States. The Act, which fundamentally reshaped the demographic and agricultural makeup of the American West, is widely regarded to be one of the most influential land laws in American history. Yet several important aspects of this Act, including its impact on the consolidation of farms in later years, have not been studied partly because of lack of appropriate detailed data. This research project will collect, digitize, merge millions of land transaction records and individual owner characteristics, and use the data to study why owners chose to homestead or purchase land allocated to them and how the ownership or homestead decision influenced farm consolidation in the 20th century as well. The results of this research will not only explain why competitive industries, such as agriculture, become a non-competitive one and thus provide important inputs into competition policies. This will help improve the functioning of the US economy, hence increase the growth rate of the economy. This research uses four projects to analyze the mechanisms behind the decision to purchase or homestead land in Kansas, and the causal effects of that decision on a range of future outcomes. The first project predicts settler decisions to purchase or homestead based on land characteristics at the farm level; the second project studies selection into purchasing and homesteading based on heterogeneous production functions; the third project estimates the option value created by homesteading using a multi-period structural model, while the final project explores the effect of the decision to homestead on the subsequent rate and method of farm consolidation over time. This project develops a structural industrial organization model of endogenous mergers. In the process, it relates the economics of farm consolidation to the industrial organization literature on horizontal mergers. Agricultural markets in the 1870’s were characterized by many small farms that produced homogeneous agricultural goods and were price-takers in both inputs and outputs. This research builds and estimate a competitive model of endogenous mergers to explain farm consolidation. The results of this research will not only explain why competitive industries become a non-competitive ones and thus provide important inputs into competition policies. This will help improve the functioning of the US economy, hence increase the growth rate of the economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.