Publisher's Synopsis
Land is an important and valuable natural resource, serving both as a store ofwealth and as an input in production. Previous attempts to measure the value of landof the United States have focused on indirect measures, inferring values based on thedifference between the market value of real property and the replacement value of structures, and have not counted the entirety of the land area of the United States. Instead, this paper takes hedonic estimates of land prices in various locations and interpolatesthese values to a mosaic of parcels, census tracts, and counties of various sizes in thecontiguous (lower 48) United States plus the District of Columbia. Estimates suggestthat this 1.89 billion acres of land are collectively worth approximately $23 trillion in2009 (current prices), with 24% of the land area and $1.8 trillion of the value held bythe federal governmen
