Does land consolidation promote livestock production and combat rural depopulation? A multi-cohort multi-treatment Difference-in-Difference analysis of parishes in northern Spain

Luis Orea, José A. Pérez-Méndez and Inmaculada Álvarez

No 2021/05, Efficiency Series Papers from University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG)

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of the land consolidation (LC) processes that have taken place in Asturias over recent decades. These processes received European funding given that their purpose is to improve the economic activity in rural areas. As many parishes have been involved in two or more LC processes, we use a Difference-in-Difference (DiD) approach with heterogeneous treatment timings to examine the temporal evolution of parishes’ livestock production and farms. To our best knowledge, a similar DiD model has not been estimated as yet in the literature. We examine whether LC helps to reverse rural depopulation in Asturias. We find that parishes’ livestock production increases about 3% on average once one or more LC processes have been implemented, and that the LC processes have especially attenuated the decline in the number of farms in (coastal) parishes where dairy farms predominate. We do not find strong evidence regarding the effectiveness of the LC processes in securing the level of rural population, except in some of the parishes located in western Asturias.

Pages: 44
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oeg:wpaper:2021/05

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