RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Unintended Beneficiaries of Farm Subsidies
JF Land Economics
JO Land Econ
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 081319-0118R2
DO 10.3368/le.98.4.081319-0118R2
A1 David Boussios
A1 Marcelo Castillo
A1 Brady Brewer
YR 2021
UL http://le.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/12/15/le.98.4.081319-0118R2.abstract
AB From 2011 to 2017, the U.S. government paid farmers annually $6 billion in decoupled subsidies. Because around sixty percent of cropland is rented, if landlords raise rents in response to subsidy payments, the subsidies may not benefit the farmers as much as intended by policy. The Agricultural Act of 2014 linked subsidy payments to county characteristics and idiosyncratic yields. Instead of payments tied to farm-level productivity, which challenged identification under earlier programs, the programs offer a new path for identifying subsidy incidences. We find rents increase by approximately $0.45-0.65 for every dollar received, roughly double what prior research found