Land Measurement Bias and Its Empirical Implications: Evidence from a Validation Exercise

Andrew Dillon, Sydney Gourlay, Kevin McGee and Gbemisola Oseni

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2019, vol. 67, issue 3, 595 - 624

Abstract: We investigate how land size measurements vary across three land measurement methods (farmer estimated, GPS, and compass-and-rope) and the effect of land measurement error on the inverse farm size relationship and input demand functions. Our findings indicate that self-reported measurement bias leads to overreporting for small plots and underreporting for large plots. The error is nonlinear, is not resolved by trimming of outliers, and results in biased estimates of the inverse land size relationship. Input demand functions that rely on self-reported land measures underestimate the effect of land on input utilization, including fertilizer and household labor.

Date: 2019
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