Strategic bidding behaviour in agricultural land rental markets: Reinforcement learning in an agent-based model

Ruth Dionisia Gicuku Njiru, Changxing Dong, Franziska Appel and Alfons Balmann

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2025, vol. 28, issue 2, 392-422

Abstract: Agricultural land markets are crucial for efficient land allocation, yet they face complexities arising from land characteristics and the heterogeneous nature of market participants. This study explores how to address heterogeneity in the modelling process for land markets models by integrating Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) into the agent-based model AgriPoliS, to model strategic bidding behaviour. The simulations demonstrates that a DRL agent adapts its bidding strategies based on long-term growth objectives, experience, competitive interactions and adaptive decision-making leading to increased land rental and farm growth compared to a standard agent using a fixed bidding strategy. The results reveal how strategic behaviour not only improve individual farm performance but also affect neighbouring farms, emphasizing the dynamic interactions within land markets. By capturing the agent’s strategic behaviour, this work contributes towards more realistic modelling of agricultural land market dynamics and offers insights into the implications of potential land market regulations. Future research will explore multi-agent frameworks to further refine these interactions and address the limitations of static bidding strategies.

Keywords: AgriPoliS; agent-based modelling; bidding strategy; deep reinforcement learning; farm growth; strategic interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 D21 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/320715/1/N ... idding_behaviour.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:320715

DOI: 10.22434/ifamr.1126

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().