EFFECTS OF OWNERSHIP RESTRICTIONS ON FARMLAND VALUES IN SASKATCHEWAN

Restrictions on the ownership of farmland by nonresidents of Saskatchewan were imposed by the Farmland Security Act (FSA) in 1974. The FSA has been blamed by some observers for depressed provincial land values. An adaptive expectations present value model is developed to estimate the effects of the FSA, with the province of Alberta included as a control. Results of seemingly unrelated regressions and generalized autoregressive conditional hetereoscedasticity estimates find no statistically significant effect of the FSA on the value of land in Saskatchewan. This may indicate that the effect of the regulatory change is too small to be measured accurately.