Agricultural land protection (ALP) is a standard policy response to a desire for food security.
However, ALP may result in a misallocation of resources. Examining rice land policy in
Vietnam, we determine the optimal level of rice land protected against other crops using a
stochastic optimization model built on top of a general equilibrium framework, combined with
sequential micro-simulations on household data. We find that converting part of protected
rice land enhances economic efficiency. Nonetheless, the policy is relatively pro-rich …