LAND-USE WITH HETEROGENEOUS LAND QUALITY - AN APPLICATION OF AN AREA BASE MODEL

Area base models are being used in resource assessments to project the availability of farm and forest land. In this paper we introduce a he terogenous land area base model and apply it to a five-state region in the southeastern United States. Land quality turns out to be an impor tant determinant of land use, suggesting that existing homogeneous lan d area base models may have an omitted variable problem. Parameter est imates are obtained using a modified multinomial legit model, which al lows for error due to the use of county averages and error resulting f rom the use of sample estimates of land use acreage.