evaluation of drought management in irrigated areas this paper focuses on the economic consequences of droughts for the irrigation sector we develop a dynamic recursive mathematical programming farm model that assumes imperfect mobility of capital and labour as well as rational expectations about future water availability the model is calibrated to 12 representative farms belonging to three irrigation communities of the guadalquivir basin south spain and used to simulate the 1991 1997 period which included 3 years of intense drought results indicate that the drought imposed significant costs on farmers but show also that water managers partly exacerbated these costs by allocating excessive amounts of water to irrigators in the abundant years the model is also used to evaluate the benefits of a perfect water supply forecast and to simulate the economic gains of a voluntary water banking scheme results show that the benefits resulting from the perfect forecast of water supply 1 year ahead would represent a relative gain of 5 however a voluntary banking system would allow farmers to increase their benefits by 32 82 depending on the supply system

efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

prices and the winner s curse we usually assume that increases in supply allocation by rationing and exclusion of potential buyers reduce prices but all these activities raise the expected price in an important set of cases when common value assets are sold furthermore when we make the assumptions needed to rule out these anomalies for symmetric buyers small asymmetries among the buyers necessarily cause the anomalies to reappear our results help explain rationing in initial public offerings and outcomes of spectrum auctions we illustrate our results in the wallet game and in another new game we introduce the maximum game

an endogenous growth model for the evolution of water rights systems this article presents a model to help explain the transition path from one water management system to another typically a commons framework to one of tradable permit based property rights furthermore drawing from transaction cost literature the model demonstrates how this takes place when externalities the strain on water resources become severe enough to warrant the increased transaction costs inherent with more complex water rights management frameworks

equilibrium properties of auctions and alternative procedures for allocating transferable permits abstract this paper examines the equilibrium properties of a range of auctions and related procedures placing emphasis on the types of procedures that are likely to be of special interest in environmental management applications nash equilibrium properties are first derived for a very general class of auctions for multiple homogeneous or heterogeneous objects or permits next it is shown that given appropriate assumptions three broad classes of public allocation procedures that do not generate revenues for the government would yield participants equal expected profits these classes are 1 incentive compatible auctions where bidders receive equal lump sum refunds 2 non incentive compatible procedures where refunds are a function of participants bids and 3 free initial distribution of permits on a lump sum basis followed by trading via a competitive market the applicability of the general results is then demonstrated by examining the particular non incentive compatible fair division procedure originally suggested by knaster finally implications of the theoretical results for applications including the allocation of transferable discharge permits and water rights are discussed

optimal auction with resale this paper investigates the design of seller optimal auctions when winning bidders can attempt to resell the good in that case the optimal allocation characterized by myerson 1981 cannot be achieved without resale i find a sufficient and necessary condition for sincere bidding given the possibility of resale in two bidder cases i prove that the myerson allocation can be achieved under standard conditions supplemented with two assumptions with three or more bidders achieving the myerson allocation is more difficult i prove that it can be implemented in special cases in those cases the myerson allocation is generated through a sequence of resale auctions each optimally chosen by a reseller

hedonic estimation applied to a water rights market rights is concerned with the efficiency of water allocations where there are legal and institutional constraints on water rights trades economists have argued that such constraints prohibit water from moving to its socially highest valued uses and hence that the allocation of water under these restrictions is inefficient on the other hand if water rights associated with a certain parcel of farm real estate could be sold separately from the land in a perfectly competitive market the allocation of water would be efficient hirshleifer et al 1969 42 43 anderson 1983 1 the past attempts to examine and compare the efficiency of water rights markets have been qualitative one notable example is the study by brown et al 1982 which hypothesized that water rights markets are more efficient in regions where water is relatively scarce six basins were examined and as

using water allocation in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities this paper uses the water allocation economy in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities a general equilibrium model is developed and incorporates agricultural amenities as byproducts of agricultural production water trade channels and multiple water types the premise is that until a decade ago water policy in israel was interlinked with agricultural land use policy integrating a monte carlo analysis the model searches for a baseline minimum value of agricultural amenity that makes household in the counterfactual scenario indifferent between the administrative and market mechanisms the minimum imputed value is around 109 agricultural output the intuition is that the gains in economic welfare from improved water use efficiency are offset by the losses in social welfare due to a reduction in available agricultural amenities

collusion under asymmetric information when applied to groups the revelation principle postulates a bayesian nash behavior between agents their binding agreements are unenforceable or the principal can prevent them at no cost we analyze instead a mechanism design problem in which the agents can communicate between themselves and collude under asymmetric information we characterize the set of implementable collusion proof contracts both when the principal offers anonymous and nonanonymous contracts after having isolated the nexi and the stakes of collusion we proceed to a normative analysis perform some comparative statics discuss our concept of collusion proofness and provide some insights about transaction costs in side contracting

the economic and financial gains from water markets in chile abstract chile is one of the few countries that has encouraged the use of markets in water resource management in order to assess the impact of water markets and transactions costs in chile four river valleys the maipo elqui limari and the azapa were selected as case studies transactions from the elqui and limari valleys during the years 1986 to 1993 were analyzed to determine the gains from trade from market transfers in the economic and financial analysis of water markets crop budgets were used to estimate the value of water in agricultural production the value of water use rights to urban water supply companies was estimated using the avoided cost of an alternative investment in a water storage reservoir the analysis demonstrated that the market transfer of water use rights does produce substantial economic gains from trade in both the elqui and limari valleys these economic gains produce rents for both buyers and sellers but buyers especially farmers growing profitable crops who buy water use rights and individuals buying water use rights for potable water supply receive higher rents then sellers large table grape producers in the limari valley and individuals buying water for human consumption in the elqui valley received the highest rents in the elqui valley net gains from trade per share were within the range of recent transfer prices of us 1000 in the limari valley gains from trade per share are 3 4 times the recent prices of us 3000 for a share of water from the cogoti reservoir where trading was active especially in the limari valley transactions costs have not presented an appreciable barrier to trading nonetheless in the large canal systems with fixed flow dividers in the elqui and maipo valley there have been very few transactions various factors contribute to the lack of trading but the absence of trading in these large canal systems highlights the costs of modifying fixed infrastructure especially for trades between farmers

some unsettled problems of irrigation 1911 a reprint of the lead article in the inaugural issue of the american economic review some unsettled problems of irrigation by katharine coman who examined the common property resource problem as applied to water in the western united states

foundations of dominant strategy mechanisms wilson 1987 criticizes applied game theory s reliance on common knowledge as sumptions in reaction to wilson s critique the recent literature of mechanism design has adopted the goal of finding detail free mechanisms in order to eliminate this re liance in practice this has meant restricting attention to simple mechanisms such as dominant strategy mechanisms however there has been little theoretical foundation for this approach in particular it is not clear the search for an optimal mechanism that does not rely on common knowledge assumption would lead to simpler mechanisms rather than more complicated ones this paper tries to fill the void in the context of an expected revenue maximizing auctioneer we investigate some foundations for using simple dominant strategy auctions

irrigation districts and water markets an application of cooperative decision making theory water supply organizations control a large portion of agricultural water rights in the western u s this paper applies cooperative and club theory models to analyze the response of these organizations to potential rural to urban water transfers application of the models is to a proposed water trade between southern california s imperial irrigation district and metropolitan water district the analysis reveals that substantial intraorganizational conflict can emerge in response to specific transfer proposals and this conflict may be sufficient to defeat or delay otherwise beneficial transfers poorly defined property rights and a failure to align these rights with operational control in the water supply organization are pinpointed as key sources of conflict

matching users rights to available groundwater abstract the amount of available groundwater in a catchment changes quickly and the amount of water that users can take sustainably depends on where and when it is taken however rights to water tend to be fixed and obtaining rights to water incurs high transaction costs as a result water catchments are over allocated worldwide in this paper i show how a catchment manager could match users rights to the available water in near real time despite uncertain future inflows while making effective use of all available hydrological data the solution uses the framework of a smart market a smart market is a periodic auction cleared with the help of an optimization model in addition to market clearing this model allows a convenient means to adjust initial rights and the auction revenue reflects the available water relative to users rights when the auction is revenue neutral the catchment may be viewed as allocated perfectly i suggest several ways in which a catchment manager can find this revenue neutral allocation assuming the manager has authority to adjust initial rights

water markets design and evidence from experimental economics market mechanisms are gaining increasing acceptance all over the world as a way of making more efficient use of scarce water resources designing regulatory frameworks that ensure both inter and intra temporal efficient allocations is a daunting task especially if supply is stochastic and there is ample storage capacity in addition to defining tradable rights specific provisions must regulate the use of reservoirs commonly water statutes include provisions that establish asymmetries regarding the allocation of water and market restrictions that ban water trading across different users in this article we use data collected in a laboratory to test two specific market regulations included in the 1999 water reform in spain first junior right holders are not allowed to buy water from senior users second the law does not explicitly define water rights over units left in reservoirs for the following season results suggest that trading restrictions among water right holders lead to welfare losses for senior users it is shown that removing this restriction would increase senior right holders benefits without reducing those of junior users results show that defining water rights over saved units across periods would increase the average stock levels of reservoirs and reduce market price instability the lessons learned from the spanish experience are applicable to settings characterized by unstable natural water supply and the availability of large storage facilities

transmission network cost allocation based on equivalent bilateral exchanges this paper presents a novel methodology for allocating the cost of a transmission network to its users based on the principle of equivalent bilateral exchanges which states that after all physical laws governing the flow of power have been met each demand is assigned a fraction of each generation and each generator is assigned a fraction of each demand in a uniform manner transmission cost allocation based on this principle presents several advantages namely independence from the choice of the slack bus recognition of counter flows and transmission use charges that are stable and always positive

valuing options in water markets a laboratory investigation risk and reliability dominate water supply discussions in the arid western united states due to increasing demand and finite weather dependent supply water markets have evolved in this region so agencies could meet this growing demand in a few instances water agencies turned to contractual mechanisms such as options to manage supply as demand continues to grow option markets and other novel approaches to allocating water may become increasingly popular we utilize experimental economics to analyze the effect of annual options on water markets in the absence of sufficient real world data for conventional econometric analysis we find gains from trade are higher when options can be traded additionally gains are more evenly distributed particularly with a dominant buyer and many sellers findings suggest option markets may be a viable choice as policymakers prepare for future droughts

papers in experimental economics competitive market institutions double auctions vs sealed bid offer auctions consider a market with the following characteristics 1 privacy that is each agent knows only his own valuation or cost conditions 2 exchange follows the rules of the oral double auction that is buyers freely announce bids or accept offers and sellers freely announce offers or accept bids 3 aggregate market supply and demand per trading period is stationary for at least two to three periods and 4 there are at least four buyers and as many sellers the literature reporting the results of a large number of experimental markets with these characteristics documents what appears to be a remarkably rapid convergence to a competitive equilibrium ce however any claim of double auction da convergence to the ce can only have meaning in one of three senses i the ce is attained immediately ii after t periods of trading some measure of the market s state such as mean price is nearer relative to experimental sampling variability to a ce than to some distinct alternative equilibrium such as a monopoly or nash equilibrium iii after t periods of trading this measure is nearer to a ce in da experimental markets than in markets organized under a different institution of contract for example a sealed bid auction since everything from electrons and the stars to rats and people yield state measures subject to error or random variation the deterministic criterion i can have no serious scientific standing by such criteria any hypothesis can be rejected and there could be no science of physics biology or economics 2 with the exception of certain very simple markets such as single object auctions or certain idealized markets such as the cournot quantity adjuster model economics has only two concepts of equilibrium monopoly and competitive the only formal model of da trading that has been proposed see david easley and john ledyard p 6 predicts stochastic convergence in finite time with probability one to a ce hence the only test alternative to the ce research hypothesis in da markets is a monopoly or monopsony equilibrium experimentalists have not reported statistical tests of the ce professor department of economics university of arizona assistant professor department of economics indiana university instructor department of economics university of arizona and sandia national laboratories albuquerque nm respectively we are indebted to the national science foundation for research support and to art denzau and mort kamien for helpful comments there is an early and recently growing body of experimental evidence for convergence to a competitive equilibrium under double auction rules the earliest evidence contained in experiments initiated in january 1956 is reported in smith 1962 1964 1965 1976 however these early experiments used between twenty and fifty or so participant buyers and sellers because in keeping with prevailing professional beliefs it was thought that a ce was unlikely to be approached unless numbers were quite large using large numbers was not unreasonable since it is a good beginning procedure to give a theory whatever is believed to be its best shot more recent evidence using six buyers six sellers and two traders in speculative da markets with cyclical demand is reported by r m miller charles plott and smith and williams 1979 for evidence from a comparison of oral and computerized da experiments with four buyers and four sellers see williams 1980 for further evidence in the context of the study of price controls see m isaac and plott 1981b and smith and williams 1981b in the context of a conspiracy study see isaac and plott 1981a in the context of comparisons between da and posted offer pricing see jon ketcham smith and williams in the context of a study of four variations on da rules see smith and williams 1980 all of these more recent papers report double auction experiments using no more than four buyers and four sellers 2as frederick mosteller once noted if you wanted to reject the inverse square law of attraction try tossing a sheet of paper out the window

water use in the spanish economy an input output approach against the background of the water limitations that often appear in spain the aim of this paper is to study the behaviour of the productive sectors of the spanish economy as direct and indirect consumers of water to that end we employ input output analysis with the particular methodology being based on the linkages analysis known as the hypothetical extraction method hem we have introduced three modifications to this method first the valuation is made in terms of water consumption secondly we obtain the components of the impacts of each block of activity into which the economy is divided with these components being described as the internal effect mixed linkage net or external backward linkage and net or external forward linkage thirdly this methodology is used to detect key sectors our results confirm the marked importance of the agriculture food and other services blocks as regards the direct and indirect consumption of water in general we also find that other services chemicals metals and electronics and agriculture blocks play an important role in explaining the consumption of drinking water moreover the hem analysis allows us to classify productive sectors according to their forward or backward linkage character in a way that is more precise than that permitted by earlier methods finally this methodology can be extended to other types of environmental pressures 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

on the empirical relevance of condorcet s paradox condorcet s paradox occurs when there is no alternative that beats every other alternative by majority the paradox may pose real problems to democratic decision making such as decision deadlocks and democratic paralysis however its relevance has been discussed again and again since the celebrated works of arrow social choice and individual values 1963 and black the theory of committees and elections 1958 the discussion varies from one extreme to the other from very relevant to practically irrelevant this paper tries to bring more clarity to the discussion by reviewing the literature on the empirical relevance of condorcet s paradox since a definition of the paradox for even numbers of voters and alternatives and for weak voter preferences is missing in the literature we first define the paradox clearly and simply then three topics are investigated namely domain conditions culture and the likelihood of the paradox and the empirical detection of the paradox domain conditions express regularities in voter preference profiles that prevent the paradox frequent observations of these domain conditions would make condorcet s paradox empirically less important cultures define probability distributions over the set of voter preferences observation of cultures might be a first step to indicate the relevance of the paradox the empirical detection of the paradox speaks for itself we will try to identify the number of observations of the paradox so far the overall conclusion is that the empirical relevance of condorcet s paradox is still unsettled

robustness and linear contracts abstract we consider a moral hazard problem where the principal is uncertain as to what the agent can and cannot do she knows some actions available to the agent but other unknown actions may also exist the principal demands robustness evaluating possible contracts by their worst case performance over unknown actions the agent might potentially take the model assumes risk neutrality and limited liability and no other functional form assumptions very generally the optimal contract is linear the model thus offers a new explanation for linear contracts in practice it also introduces a flexible modeling approach for moral hazard under nonquantifiable uncertainty jel d81 d82 d86

implementation in weakly undominated strategies optimality of second price auction and posted price mechanism we study the mechanism design problem of guaranteeing desirable performances whenever agents are rational in the sense of not playing weakly dominated strategies we first provide an upper bound for the best performance we can guarantee among all feasible mechanisms the bound is represented as the maximized value of the designer s objective subject to the inequality version of the standard envelope incentive conditions we then prove the bound to be tight under certain conditions on the designer s prior over the agents pay off types in auction and bilateral trade applications in private value auction and bilateral trade the optimal mechanisms a second price auction and posted price mechanism respectively satisfy dominant strategy incentive compatibility the classical notion of robust mechanisms in an interdependent value auction we find that a second price auction is optimal in revenue with interdependent values which is neither dominant strategy nor ex post incentive compatible but satisfies the novel incentive compatibility introduced in this analysis

the advantage of resource queues over spot resource markets decision coordination in experiments under resource uncertainty farmers have to make key decisions such as which crops to plant or whether to prepare the soil before knowing how much water they will get they face losses if they make costly decisions but do not receive water and they may forego profits if they receive water without being prepared we consider the coordination of farmers decisions such as which crops to plant or whether to prepare the soil when farmers must divide an uncertain water supply we compare ex ante queues pre decision to an ex post spot market post decision post rain in experiments in rural brazil and a university in england queues have greater coordination success than does the spot market

cadillac desert revisited property rights public policy and water resource depletion to alleviate arizona s dependence on groundwater the federal government subsidized construction of the central arizona project cap to import water from the colorado river in exchange for the subsidy arizona reformed its groundwater law to eliminate common property pumping and to ban groundwater mining after the year 2025 we build a model of water resource development in which imported water is a capacity constrained backstop the model is applied to quantify the welfare effects of alternative cap construction dates and arizona groundwater laws we reach two general conclusions first cap was completed 86 years too early in 1987 at a deadweight loss of 2 612 billion ironically construction in 1987 yielded lower surplus than never constructing cap second the political exchange of reform for subsidy introduced a greater loss 2 612 billion than it corrected 0 810 billion the exchange was worse than doing nothing at all

refuting two claims about virtual water trade abstract using the heckscher ohlin trade model i refute two prominent but incorrect claims on virtual water trade these claims are that virtual water trade i levels uneven water distribution and ii reduces the potential for water conflict both claims are based on an incorrect understanding of comparative advantage in the production of water intensive goods the results show that both claims only hold under certain conditions but do not necessarily follow from the heckscher ohlin trade model

resource rights and markets in a general equilibrium model of production rights to a free resource lead to distributional deadweight losses in partial equilibrium the present paper examines related distortions in a general equilibrium model of production with output prices constant for the small open economy the free resource can result in lower output than a market with weak substitution in the other sector the free resource also leads to a convex production frontier implying a price increase lowers output in the sector regarding policy an import tariff export subsidy or price support would lower sector output these general equilibrium distortions increase the incentives to favor resource markets over rights

adaptation to an irrigation water restriction imposed through local governance abstract we estimate how farmers adapted to a water restriction imposed through local governance the restriction imposed a uniform quota on water use with a 5 year allocation and allowed trading of the quota within the restricted area our analysis exploits unique micro level data on irrigated water use irrigated acreage and crops we use a difference in differences econometric strategy that also includes farmer time fixed effects to estimate the response to the restriction where we exploit water rights between 2 and 5 miles of the policy boundary as a control group results indicate that farmers reduced water use by 26 due to the policy with most of the response due to reductions in water use intensity on the same crops rather than through reductions in irrigated acreage or changes in crops the results imply that the short run welfare impact of the policy was smaller than a policy that reduces irrigated acreage

cooperation in common property regimes under extreme drought conditions empirical evidence from the use of pooled transferable quotas in spanish irrigation systems the success of a common property regime can be partially judged on the basis of its ability to handle extreme events that stress its capacity for cooperation this paper compares the performance of 38 irrigation associations in a large irrigation area in spain during a severe drought as a test of hypotheses derived from property right theories the case is particularly interesting because it contains a transferable quota institution that can potentially strengthen the effectiveness of common property regimes in scarcity conditions according to the results the use of transferable quotas across associations can contribute to cooperation and drought performance in this context performance is higher when the associations enjoy 1 effective monitoring systems 2 experience and legitimate leaders and 3 facilitative biophysical conditions like soil water holding capacity the analysis also suggests that biophysical properties like soil water holding capacity may compensate for weaker monitoring or leadership and vice versa

water externalities tragedy of the common canal laboratory experiments are used to investigate alternative solutions to the allocation problem of a common pool resource with unidirectional flow focus is on the comparative economic efficiency of nonbinding communications bilateral coasian bargaining allocation by auction and allocation by exogenous usage fee all solutions improve allocative efficiency but communication and bilateral bargaining are not generally as effective as market allocations an exogenously imposed optimal fee results in the greatest allocative efficiency closely followed by an auction allocation that determines the usage fee endogenously

markets for water rights under environmental constraints abstract the cumulative impact of pollutants on water quality at a given location along a river is a function of prior loadings as well as pollution and surface flows at that particular site the question of whether it is possible to maintain water quality under alternative mechanisms for allocating surface water and pollution rights is addressed we model the optimal allocation of surface water and pollution rights along a river with water quality constraints due to cumulative effects the shadow values of water and pollution rights are contingent on location it is shown that a nash equilibrium in a market for tradable surface water rights in conjunction with a market for pollution damages implements the optimal solution the market supports location specific prices for both consumptive water rights and pollution damages

when are local incentive constraints sufficient we study the question of whether local incentive constraints are sufficient to imply full incentive compatibility in a variety of mechanism design settings allowing for probabilistic mechanisms we give a unified approach that covers both continuous and discrete type spaces on many common preference domains including any convex domain of cardinal or ordinal preferences single peaked ordinal preferences and successive single crossing ordinal preferences local incentive compatibility suitably defined implies full incentive compatibility on domains of cardinal preferences that satisfy a strong nonconvexity condition local incentive compatibility is not sufficient our sufficiency results hold for dominant strategy and bayesian nash solution concepts and allow for some interdependence in preferences

allocating resources in an uncertain world water management and endangered species instream flows may be essential in protecting aquatic species that are threatened or endangered an economic model of the optimal allocation of water under pure uncertainty is developed with particular attention paid to the situation when a species characterized by critical depensation is affected by instream flows we adopt the notion of pure uncertainty that frank knight and daniel ellsberg intended which applies when decision makers cannot reduce their uncertainty to a unique probability distribution following recent work by hansen sargent and others we employ robust control as a way to deal with this problem copyright 2008 oxford university press

an integrated analysis of the effects of local water institutions on irrigated agriculture outcomes in the arid western united states abstractirrigation water rights and their governance structures constitute the foundation of local water institutions and profoundly influence water resource allocations irrigated agricultural productivity and other consumptive water uses in the arid climate zones this article explores the regional structures of irrigation water rights and water governance and empirically analyses the priority effects of water rights on irrigated agriculture at the micro level in idaho an arid and semiarid state in the western united states we integrate a unique data set of water rights and water supplies with agricultural features and environmental characteristics into our empirical analysis results indicate that seniority in water resources allocation has significant positive effects on both the average crop revenue and crop water use efficiency local water rights structures differ significantly in seniority and water sources from region to region in response to the heterogeneity in local water rights structures

government procurement and international trade abstract we model the bidding for a government contract in which there is imperfect competition each bidder is better informed about his own costs than either his rival bidders or the government and the distribution of the domestic firms costs differs from the distribution of foreign firms costs because of comparative advantage effects we find that the government minimizes its expected procurement cost by operating a price preference policy not necessarily purchasing from the lowest bidder

irrigation technology adoption and gains from water trading under asymmetric information we develop a water allocation and irrigation technology adoption model under the prior appropriation doctrine with asymmetric information among heterogeneous farmers and between farmers and water authorities we find that adverse selection reduces the adoption of modern irrigation technology we also show that even with asymmetric information incentives for water trade exist and lead to additional technology adoption with gains to all parties this suggests that under asymmetric information a thin secondary market improves the allocation of water resources and induces additional adoption of modern irrigation technologies

an input output model of water consumption analysing intersectoral water relationships in andalusia abstract this paper presents an input output model of sectoral water consumption created by combining the extended leontief input output model with the model of energy use developed by proops the analysis is applied to andalusia a region situated in the south of spain which is characterized by water shortage we determine which economic sectors consume the greatest quantities of water both directly and indirectly and to what extent this natural resource may become a limiting factor in the growth of certain production sectors the model allows us to distinguish between direct and indirect consumption thus offering the possibility of designing an economic and environmental policy oriented towards water saving additionally the model allows simulation of possible changes in water consumption caused by certain environmental measures as well as their consequences on the regional economy

an analysis of irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine hypotheses and applications this article measures irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine by developing a model of farmers land allocations in response to water supply change the modelling approach considers the institutional factors of water rights and permits the inclusive determination of water and land allocations we utilize farm level data of irrigated agriculture in water district 1 in idaho to examine the predictions from our theoretical model the water rights priority date is consolidated at the farm level and used to differentiate farmers responses we test a set of hypotheses that relate to water supply and crop revenue our results suggest that the water rights priority has a profound impact on agricultural outcomes indicating strong institutional effects and weak influence of market based approaches farmers respond to both long term and seasonal water supply change and variation and they respond to seasonal water supply forecasts in varied ways depending on their water rights portf

marginal pricing of transmission services an analysis of cost recovery this paper presents an in depth analysis of network revenues computed with marginal pricing and in particular it investigates the reasons why marginal prices fail to recover the total incurred network costs in actual power systems the basic theoretical results are presented and the major causes of the mismatch between network costs and marginal revenues are identified and illustrated with numerical examples some tutorial and others of realistic size the regulatory implications of marginal network pricing in the context of competitive electricity markets are analyzed and suggestions are provided for the meaningful allocation of the costs of the network among its users

how do markets manage water resources an experiment we experimentally test how a private monopoly a duopoly and a public utility allocate water of differing qualities to households and farmers most of our results are in line with the theoretical predictions overexploitation of the resources is observed independently of the market structure stock depletion for the public utility is the fastest followed by the private duopoly and private monopoly on the positive aspects of centralized public management we find that the average quality to price ratio offered by the public monopoly is substantially higher than that offered by the private monopoly or duopoly

water scarcity and food import a case study for southern mediterranean countries abstract taking six southern mediterranean countries as a case study this paper addresses the water food challenges facing water scarce countries and the implications for the world food economy by accounting the volume of virtual water embedded in food imports into the countries concerned a close relationship between water endowment and food import dependence is elaborated a projection of the cereal demand suggests an increment of 40 60 percentage points in these countries by 2020 above their 1998 99 levels raising the aggregate volume of cereal imports to around 40 million tons the analysis also finds that the trend of shifting from staple grain crops to higher value cash crops was weak during the past two decades a deteriorating trade deficit for both cereal and noncereal agricultural products was evident in almost all the countries suggesting a rigid and persistent constraint of water scarcity on overall agricultural development the results of this case study highlight two important points a food imports are imperative for compensating water resource deficiency b water scarcity related food imports will continue to expand and impose increasing impacts on the global food economy

obviously strategy proof mechanisms what makes some strategy proof mechanisms easier to understand than others to address this question i propose a new solution concept a mechanism is obviously strategy proof osp if it has an equilibrium in obviously dominant strategies this has a behavioral interpretation a strategy is obviously dominant if and only if a cognitively limited agent can recognize it as weakly dominant it also has a classical interpretation a choice rule is osp implementable if and only if it can be carried out by a social planner under a particular regime of partial commitment i fully characterize the set of osp mechanisms in a canonical setting with one dimensional types and transfers a laboratory experiment tests and corroborates the theory

market power in water markets abstract we model market power in water markets as multi market cournot competition with a river structure suppliers are connected through water balances which imposes resource constraints and they are connected to heterogeneous water users via a water delivery infrastructure our model captures a wide range of specific water market structures we establish conditions for existence of an equilibrium and we assess the effects of market power on water extraction delivery and water prices although the monopoly case is similar to standard economic theory three other specific water market structures illustrate that standard intuition has to be revisited

multi criteria modelling of irrigation water market at basin level a spanish case study abstract this paper develops a multi criteria methodology to simulate irrigation water markets at basin level for this purpose it is assumed that irrigators try to optimise personal multi attribute utility functions via their productive decision making process crop mix subject to a set of constraints based upon the structural features of their farms in this sense farmers with homogeneous behaviour regarding water use have been grouped such groups being established as types to be considered in the whole water market simulation model this model calculates the market equilibrium through a solution that maximises aggregate welfare which is quantified as the sum of the multi attribute utilities reached by each of the participating agents this methodology has been empirically applied for the duero basin northern spain finding that the implementation of this economic institution would increase economic efficiency and agricultural labour demand particularly during droughts

value of moving from central planning to a market system lessons from the israeli water sector abstract this paper explores the implications of the transformation of the system of water resources allocation to the agricultural sector in israel from a one in which allotments are allocated to the different users without any permission to trade with water rights a mathematical planning model is used for the entire israeli agricultural sector in which an optimal allocation of the water resources is found and compared to the existing one the results of the model are used in order to gain insight into the shadow price of the different water bodies in israel about eight these prices can then be used to grant property rights to the water users themselves in order to guarantee rational behavior of water use since now one can sell their rights at the source itself the implication is clear with regard to any possible movement towards a market system in any other sector from the dual prices of the primal problem we can forecast the equilibrium prices and their implications for the different users the central government does not have to interfere with the market mechanism because as will be shown every farmer has the option to sell his right or to use it as participation in the market is voluntary every farmer makes a decision that is both individually and socially rational however in moving from a central planning allocation to a market mechanism the government has another task which is to grant the property rights in order for the market to begin to evolve it is not guaranteed that under any initial allocation a decentralization of the system will benefit all the regions but at least part of the problem is to be resolved between the regions themselves as the results shows there is a potential budgetary benefit of 28 million dollars when capital cost is not included and 64 million dollars when they are included

efficient spatial allocation of irrigation water in the presence of conveyance losses the efficient quantity of water applied falls with distance from the water source but the amount of water sent including conveyance losses actually increases with distance from the source except toward the tail end of the inigation system this implies that if marginal cost pricing were implemented farmers at the middle and lower reaches of the system would have to pay more money for less water received the model is illustrated and alternative financing schemes compared for an empirically derived demand function for imgation water despite massive public investments in irrigation infrastructure ex post evaluations of irrigation projects in developed and developing countries indicate that actual benefits are substantially below projected levels considerable evidence suggests that these low benefits are largely the result of poor on farm water use efficiencies and rent seeking activities that result from water charges that are low and often unrelated to water use chaudhry repetto bowen and young for example farmers near the system headworks are said to consume a disproportionate share of irrigation water while tail farmers are left with scanty and unreliable residual supplies reidinger wade many governments faced with increasing political pressure to conserve water and reduce fiscal deficits are considering higher water charges to decrease waste and increase cost recovery from project beneficiaries there is also increased awareness that low water charges and loosely enforced water rationing guidelines lead to environmental damages and excessive mining of groundwater resources in general the problems of water allocation and low user charges contribute to derivative problems in achieving efficiency equity fiscal stability and environmental sustainability

futures contracts in water leasing an experimental analysis using basin characteristics of the rio grande nm providing for increased water demands during periods of persistent drought and climatic variability may require water managers users and planners to think differently about how water resources are allocated a water marketing institution that allows water rights holders to reallocate water on a temporary basis could overcome these challenges with minimal conflict in this paper a water marketing institution that allows for the temporary reallocation of water rights in a spot and futures market is investigated the results provide insight into three key questions 1 how does trading impact the physical system 2 does the value of water differ by trading agents 3 how is economic welfare redistributed as a result of trading results of experimental treatments display minor impacts to the physical system that prices differ across the different type of trading agents and the addition of a futures market has the ability to decrease market prices while increasing economic welfare as a futures market allows users to hedge against future water uncertainty

spot water markets and risk in water supply water availability patterns in semiarid regions are typically extremely variable even in basins with a highly developed infrastructure users are subject to unreliable water supplies incurring substantial economic losses during periods of scarcity more flexible instruments such as voluntary exchanges of water among users can help users to reduce risk exposure this article looks at the effects of spot water markets on the economic risk caused by water availability variations our theoretical and empirical risk analyses are based on the random profits of water users profit probability density functions are formally and graphically characterized for both water sellers and buyers under several possible market outcomes we conclude from this analysis that where water supply is stochastic water markets unambiguously reduce both parties risk exposure the empirical study is conducted on an irrigation district in the guadalquivir valley southern spain where there is a high probability of periods of extreme water scarcity water demand functions for the district representative irrigators and a spatial equilibrium model are used to simulate market exchanges and equilibrium this programming model is combined with statistical simulation techniques we show that the profit probability distribution of a representative irrigator is modified if water exchanges are authorized leading to risk reductions results also indicate that if the market were extended to several districts and users that are subject to varying hydrological risk exposure extremely low profit events would be less likely to occur in sum we show that exchanging water in annual spot markets can reduce farmers economic vulnerability caused by water supply variability across irrigation seasons these results support the water policy reform carried out in spain in 1999 to allow for voluntary water exchanges among right holders

bargaining rules for a thin spot water market markets for water rights have long been advocated to resolve user conflicts and to improve efficiency trelease 1961 hartman and seastone 1970 the potential for efficiency gains from market allocation of water has been well established burness and quirk 1979 eheart lyon and wong 1983 moore 1986 almost all studies of water markets address the transferability of long term water rights i e base or property rights eheart et al 1983 lyon 1986 saliba bush and martin 1987 crouter 1987 however rental or spot markets for water can improve efficiency by allowing allocational adjustments in line with changing conditions without disturbing the base rights system exchanges of either base rights or spot rights that entail a change in the point of diversion may result in third party effects even in the absence of return flow problems johnson gisser and werner 1981 eheart et al 1983 2 such third party effects place practical limits on the geographic scope of water exchanges and result in a thin market i e a market with few eligible participants thin markets are likely to be manipulated by participants leading to inefficiency unless suitable bargaining rules are designed to counter market manipulation the efficiency gains from water exchanges cannot be fully realized this paper uses multilateral bargaining models based on a game theoretic approach to address bargaining rules that will facilitate the efficient operation of a thin water market across a variety of bargaining environments institutional features such as the size of the water market the water rights system the distribution of farm sizes and the level of participants information define the bargaining environment the models are translated into computer simulations based on data representing irrigation water demand in the crane creek watershed of kankakee county illinois thin water markets are likely to be the rule rather than the exception especially in the u s west where many streams with insufficient flows are fully or overappropriated given this fact it is crucial to investigate how the efficiency of a thin water market is affected by the relative bargaining strengths of the participants and to suggest suitable bargaining rules that could improve the social gains achieved in thin water markets

can a water market avert the double whammy of trade reform and lead to a win win outcome abstract this paper focuses on the linkages between water and trade policies using morocco as a case this country is typical of many in that policy protects its import competing agricultural and industrial sectors while water in irrigated agriculture is priced below its marginal value product changing water policy without correcting for these other distortions leads to a more inefficient allocation of water on the other hand reforming trade policy alone can make farmers growing crops protected pre reform worse off using an intertemporal applied general equilibrium model we find that trade reform actually creates an opportunity to pursue water policy reform creating a water user rights market post trade reform not only compensates for the decline in farmers profits caused by the trade reform but also raises the efficiency of water allocation and hence benefits the economy as a whole

bargaining over agricultural property rights discretion are malleable shifting as collective values and policies evolve over time the costs of resolving conflicts over property rights in water quality air quality wildlife habitat scenic vistas and other commons resources have the potential to be enormous innes policies to address these disputes determine which costs will be borne by whom and have broad ramifications for agriculture and environmental quality in this article i explore the process of bargaining over disputed rights to natural resources emphasizing the role of costs and delays in signaling information so that expectations may converge and voluntary settlements may be achieved economists traditionally focus on the economics of alternative outcomes resource allocations not on the processes for achieving those outcomes property rights disputes present a challenge for economists whose efficiency oriented tools do not indicate which interests ought to be favored or which starting point to use in evaluating the impacts of a change in entitlements nevertheless economic expertise is needed to devise effective institutional incentives for resolving disputes and to identify the distributional consequences of alternative dispute resolution processes the article concludes with observations on a constructive role for economists in this arena perceived fairness and property rights conflicts

the value of heterogeneous property rights and the costs of water volatility the system of prior appropriation in the western unites states prioritizes property rights for water based on the establishment of beneficial use creating a hierarchy where rights initiated first are more secure i estimate the demand for security in water rights through their capitalization in agricultural property markets in the yakima river basin a major watershed in washington state all water rights are satisfied in an average year so the relative value of secure property rights is a function of water supply volatility and the costs of droughts are predominantly born by those with weak rights in aggregate security in water rights does not capitalize into property values at the irrigation district level however there is heterogeneity in the premium for secure water rights the lack of a premium for district level water security is robust to a variety of econometric methods to account for correlated district unobservables and the null result produces an economically significant upper bound on the value to water security for the district the ability for farmers to adapt to water supply volatility as well as expectations about water markets and government infrastructure investment are leading explanations for the lack of an aggregate premium these explanations are supported by the pattern of heterogeneity in the water security premium

the gains from agricultural groundwater trade and the potential for market power theory and application this article models and estimates the efficiency gains from using market based instruments relative to command and control to manage groundwater a theoretical model of an imperfectly competitive groundwater market is developed to show how the magnitude and distribution of the gains from trade change as market structure varies market structure is a key consideration because future groundwater markets will likely feature geographic limitations to trade large agricultural players and a legal environment that is conducive to forming cartel like coalitions application of the model to a groundwater dependent agricultural region in southern california shows the existence of large gains from trade despite the potential for market power with benefits up to 36 greater than that under command and control distributional impacts however can be sizable even for small degrees of market power simulations that vary market conditions show that results likely generalize to other groundwater basins

allocation and pricing at the water district level efficient water pricing schemes are introduced for nonprofit water agencies where members have property rights based upon historical usage the existing average cost rate design is compared with the proposed designs active trading and passive trading both schemes lead to efficiency but passive trading has operational advantages since it generates less transaction costs than active trading block rate pricing is shown to be suboptimal and inferior to passive trading an example from the israeli water economy is used as an empirical illustration

contestability in the presence of an alternate market an experimental examination most earlier experimental tests ofthe contestable market hypothesis assume a zero opportunity cost of entry this design feature makes interpretation of results in terms of entry behavior problematic the experimental study that i report tests contestability with the addition of an alternate market that yields a positive profit with certainty this safe haven operationalizes a positive opportunity cost of entry hit and run entry is observed in the experiments adjusted mean prices are not significantly different from the zero opportunity cost case two methodological questions are also examined in one treatment sellers price offers are allowed only in 0 25 increments the simplification of the sellers decision space makes collusive arrangements more probable secondly market outcomes using human subject buyers are compared with outcomes from experiments with computer simulated demand the disciplining effect of human subject buyers results in market prices that converge to competitive levels more quickly the theory of contestable markets as presented by william baumol in his 1981 address as outgoing president of the american economic association has received considerable attention since its introduction the thesis of contestability is that we can model a market that attains a competitive outcome without the large numbers price taking assumption in the perfectly contestable market envisioned by baumol and others we would observe the efficient competitive price in equilibrium even with few or only one active seller the threat of entry is the disciplining force that sustains the efficient price as an equilibrium previous experimental tests of the contestable market hypothesis for the natural monopoly case all include at least two active firms pricing in every period the laboratory outcomes of these markets are indistinguishable from the destructive competition that has historically concerned scholars sharkey 1982 one can assert that the competitive prices that result from these natural monopoly markets are due to cutthroat competition because that market is the only game in town the study of the contestable natural monopoly that i report allows subjects the option of earning a normal rate of return in an alternate market thus there is at least the possibility that we can observe a single active seller choosing the efficient price

review of transmission schemes and case studies for renewable power integration into the remote grid investment in transmission for renewable power penetration to the remote grid essentially faces a set of inherent regulatory economic and technical challenges this work investigates these challenges to enhance renewable power integration into the remote grid this study aims to enhance regulatory policies and associated planning frameworks to be more efficient and justifiable for renewable power integration paradigm first a set of leading transmission schemes practiced or investigated in different countries are evaluated against the challenges which are obvious for long distance renewable power transmission second a net benefit framework is presented to address the challenging issues of location constrained renewable power penetration into the queensland network of the australian grid the proposed framework incorporates the carbon emission price as an environmental benefit which significantly influences the cost benefit analysis this paper discusses the hub approach of network integration the transmission investment cost allocation is addressed here as well the concepts are verified through the implementation of the proposed framework in four prospective projects of the queensland network in the australian national electricity market nem

the formation of cooperatives a game theoretic approach with implications for cooperative finance decision making and stability this paper departs from the traditional organization oriented approach to cooperative analysis it exploits cooperation s functional similarity to vertical integration to examine individuals incentives to form cooperatives a model of formation of a purchasing cooperative is presented and developed as an n person game with the core as a solution concept core existence is examined for both single and multiple cooperative configurations and cooperative finance methods are examined relative to finding core compatible allocation rules the results provide insight into a cooperative s equilibrium output stability decision making financing methods and choice of open or restricted membership

are virtual water flows in spanish grain trade consistent with relative water scarcity abstract virtual water adds a new dimension to international trade and brings along a new perspective about water scarcity and water resource management most virtual water literature has focused on quantifying virtual water flows and on its application to ensure water and food security nevertheless the analysis of the potential gains from international trade at least from a water resources perspective needs to take into account both spatial and temporal variations of blue groundwater and stream flow and green soil moisture water as well as the socioeconomic and policy conditions this paper evaluates whether spanish international trade with grains is consistent with relative water scarcity for this purpose the study estimates the volume and economic value of virtual water flow through international grain trade for the period 1997 2005 which includes 3 years with different rainfall levels the calculations show that spain is a net virtual water importer through international grain trade the volume of net virtual water imports amounts to 3420 4383 and 8415 million m 3 in wet 1997 medium 1999 and dry 2005 years respectively valuing blue water at its shadow price or scarcity value blue water exports oscillate between 0 7 and 34 2 million euros for a wet and dry year respectively overall grain trade is apparently consistent with relative water scarcity as net imports increase in dry years however the evolution of grain exports expressed as a variation in quantity and volume does not match the variations in resource scarcity a disaggregated crop analysis reveals that there are other factors such as quality product specialization or the demand for a standardized product which also influence trade decisions and are not included in the notion of virtual water these facts among others can therefore create potential distortions in the application of virtual water to the analysis of specific trade patterns nevertheless from a water resources perspective virtual water can bring important insights across countries for improving water and land management globally fostering adaptation strategies to climate change and to transboundary resource management

transmission use of system charges under future gb power system scenarios if transmission charges are to reflect costs they should be affected by the location of demand and generation this paper describes the investment cost related pricing icrp methodology used to calculate transmission charges in great britain gb which is based on the marginal investment cost of additional demand or generation using a dc load flow transport model we apply this existing method to calculate charges for the supergen futurenet scenarios for 2020 this study highlights the sensitivities in charges for use of the transmission system arising from plausible demand and generation developments the changes in tariffs will present financial challenges for system users in some areas the objective of the work presented is to illustrate the sensitivity of the charges produced by this methodology to changes in demand generation and network topology rather than compare alternative pricing approaches the conclusion drawn is that the icrp system pricing method may be suitable in future years but only with some important issues investigated and resolved

collusion via resale the english auction is susceptible to tacit collusion when post auction interbidder resale is allowed we show this by constructing equilibria where with positive probability one bidder wins the auction without any competition and divides the spoils by optimally reselling the good to the other bidders these equilibria interim pareto dominate among bidders the standard value bidding equilibrium without requiring the bidders to make any commitment on bidding behavior or postbidding spoil division

robustly optimal auctions with unknown resale opportunities the standard revenue maximizing auction discriminates against a priori stronger bidders so as to reduce their information rents we show that such discrimination is no longer optimal when the auction s winner may resell to another bidder and the auctioneer has non bayesian uncertainty about such resale opportunities we identify a worst case resale scenario in which bidders values become publicly known after the auction and losing bidders compete bertrand style to buy the object from the winner with this form of resale misallocation no longer reduces the information rents of the high value bidder as he could still secure the same rents by buying the object in resale under regularity assumptions we show that revenue is maximized by a version of the vickrey auction with bidder specific reserve prices first proposed by ausubel and cramton 2004 the proof of optimality involves constructing lagrange multipliers on a double continuum of binding non local incentive constraints

speculation in standard auctions with resale in standard auctions resale creates a role for a speculator a bidder who is commonly known to have no use value for the good on sale we study this issue in environments with symmetric independent private value bidders for second price and english auctions the efficient value bidding equilibrium coexists with a continuum of inefficient equilibria in which the speculator wins the auction and makes positive profits first price and dutch auctions have an essentially unique equilibrium and whether or not the speculator wins the auction and distorts the final allocation depends on the number of bidders the value distribution and the discount factor speculators do not make profits in first price or dutch auctions

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

the design of smart water market institutions using laboratory experiments one of the problems with proposals for substantialinstitutional change in water systems is thatmodification and irreversibility make the processslow cautious and costly to society in this paper we discuss the role that experimental economics canplay in evaluating proposed institutional changes tohelp facilitate a more rapid and smooth adoption ofchanges in the water system experimental economicsyields a formal and replicable system for analyzingalternative market structures before they are actuallyimplemented for example a water market can bedeveloped and tested in the laboratory under supplyand demand constraints that reflect drought conditionsthat might occur in california or other arid regionsin the world we present a prototype of a californiawater transfer model and the results from a series ofwater market experiments results include realizedmarket efficiency and surplus distribution as well asan analysis of market price volatility theimplications of this research extend well beyondcalifornia water markets not only to water markets inother arid regions but also to the design of marketsfor other environmental goods including tradablepollution permits and fishery itqs

laboratory experimentation in economics six points of view 1 introduction and overview alvin e roth 2 bargaining phenomena and bargaining theory alvin e roth 3 equity and coalition bargaining in experimental three person games reinhard selten 4 the psychology of choice and the assumptions of economics richard thaler 5 hypothetical valuations and preference reversals in the context of asset trading marc knez and vernon l smith 6 economics according to the rats and pigeons too what have we learned and what can we hope to learn john h kagel 7 dimensions of parallelism some policy applications of experimental methods charles r plott

auctions versus negotiations which is the more profitable way to sell a company an auction with no reserve price or an optimally structured negotiation with one less bidder we show under reasonable assumptions that the auction is always preferable when bidders signals are independent for affiliated signals the result holds under certain restrictions on the seller s choice of negotiating mechanism the result suggests that the value of negotiating skill is small relative to the value of additional competition the paper also shows how the analogies between monopoly theory and auction theory can help derive new results in auction theory jel d44 g34 there are close analogies between standard price theory and the theory of auctions in an absolute english auction in which the price rises continuously until only one bidder remains and the seller is required to accept the final bid the sale price equals the lowest competitive price at which supply equals demand in the theory of optimal auctions the seller is treated as a monopolist who can choose any

robustly collusion proof implementation a contract with multiple agents may be susceptible to collusion we show that agents collusion imposes no cost in a large class of circumstances with risk neutral agents including both uncorrelated and correlated types in those circumstances any payoff the principal can attain in the absence of collusion including the second best level can be attained in the presence of collusion in a way robust to many aspects of collusion behavior the collusion proof implementation generalizes to a setting in which only a subset of agents may collude provided that noncollusive agents incentives can be protected via an ex post incentive compatible and ex post individually rational mechanism our collusion proof implementation also sheds light on the extent to which hierarchical delegation of contracts can optimally respond to collusion

institutional path dependence in climate adaptation coman s some unsettled problems of irrigation districts that emerged in the american west in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in response to aridity to facilitate agricultural water delivery use and trade raise the transaction costs today of water markets these markets are vital for smooth reallocation of water to higher valued uses elsewhere in the economy and for flexible response to greater hydrological uncertainty this institutional path dependence illustrates how past arrangements to meet conditions of the time constrain contemporary economic opportunities they cannot be easily significantly modified or replaced ex post

appropriative water rights and the efficient allocation of resources this paper investigates the allocative efficiency of the appropriative system of water rights within the context of a simplified model of a water using industry at a long run competitive equilibrium for the industry and with a prohibition on the transfer of water rights among firms it is shown that 1 senior appropriators claim and use more water than junior appropriators 2 senior appropriators bear less risk than junior appropriators 3 the allocation of water and diversion capacitie 6among firms is inefficient being dominated by an equal sharing among firms the equal sharing allocation which is pareto optimal when diversion capacities are supplied by a competitive leasing industry can be achieved under the appropriative system if there are competitive markets in water rights and in leases for the use of diversion capacities an application of the coase theorem