Agent-Based Land Markets : Heterogeneous Agents, Land Prices and Urban Land Use Change

Abstract

We construct a spatially explicit agent-based model of a bilateral land market. Heterogeneous agents form their bid and ask prices for land based on the utility that they obtain from a certain location (house/land) and based on the state of the market (an excess of demand or supply). We underline the distinction between bid /ask price and individual willingness to pay/to accept and show that variations between them that reflect market conditions can influence land prices. Agents sort among locations with respect to distance from the city center and environmental spatial externalities. Aggregated outcomes such as land patterns and land prices are produced by the model. The basic model of buyers and sellers trading land in the urban area produces results identical to the monocentric urban model. However, more complex dynamics appears when environmental amenities and market-adjustment variable influence the formation of land prices.