How do institutional market players matter in farmland pricing?

•We trace land prices back to sellers' and buyers' structural identities.•Privatisation using first price auctions are hypothetised to drive land prices.•We perform a hedonic pricing model and use spatio-temporal econometrics.•We find evidence for higher prices paid if land is offered by state-agencies.•Agency prices are up while one agency sells at lower prices to farmers.

In this paper we analyse how institutional sellers within the privatisation process shape price formation in agricultural land markets by taking the German reunification as an example. These institutions sell the formerly state owned land within first-price sealed bid auctions, publish calls and obtained prices, and are hypothesised to exploit their market power. Based on the conceptual framework of hedonic pricing models, we use a spatio-temporal modelling approach to empirically quantify these impacts. We thereby control for land productivity characteristics, potential buyers and whether farmers purchase the land. We find that privatisation agencies sell at significantly higher prices, while one agency sells at lower prices to farmers.