water pricing policies public decision making and farmers response implications for water policy abstract the problems caused by water scarcity demand important changes in the criteria and objectives of water policies the agricultural sector in spain consumes up to 80 of all available hydric resources and the need to increase the efficiency of current uses of water in the agricultural sector is at the core of the country s national water policy one alternative would be to resort to water pricing policies with the aim of providing incentives to save water consumption although it would inflict a certain degree of income losses to the farmers and raise the revenue collected by the water authorities the objective of this research is to analyze the effect caused by the application of different water pricing policies on water demand farmers income and the revenue collected by the government agency to undertake this analysis a dynamic mathematical programming model has been built that simulates farmers behavior and their response to different water pricing scenarios empirical application of the model has been carried out in several irrigation districts in spain covering varied farm regions and river basins results show that the effects of alternative pricing policies for irrigation water are strongly dependent on regional structural and institutional conditions and that changing policies produce distinct consequences within the same region and water district thus equivalent water charges would create widespread effects on water savings farm income and collected government revenue across regions and districts

bargaining and devolution in the upper guadiana basin increasingly central governments approach contentious natural resource allocation problems by devolving partial decision making responsibility to local stakeholders this paper conceptualizes devolution as a three stage process and uses a simulation model calibrated to real world conditions to analyze devolution in spain s upper guadiana basin the spanish national government has proposed spending over a billion euros to reverse a 30 year decline in groundwater levels we investigate how the government can most effectively allocate this money to improve water levels by utilizing its power to set the structure of a local negotiation process using a numerical nash model of local bargaining we find that if the national government creates appropriate incentives local bargaining can produce water stabilization the actual water levels that will emerge are highly dependent on the central government s decisions about the budget available to local stakeholders and the default policy which will be influenced by the relative value the government places on various financial and environmental outcomes our paper concludes by determining the relationship between these relative valuations and the government s preferences over water levels

alternative models of input allocation in multicrop systems irrigation water in the central plains united states abstract this paper compares three models of input allocation in multicrop systems in addition to the variable input and satisficing models analyzed in previous research an allocatable fixed input model of short run input use is derived the empirical application studies irrigation water use in the central plains region of the united states based on results from model specification tests and prediction accuracy measures the allocatable fixed input model dominates both other models in explaining multicrop water allocation in addition the paper presents an alternative approach to the study of deficient data on multicrop production by transferring econometric results from analysis of non deficient crop level data input allocations in deficient data sets can be predicted

managing water supply shortage interruption vs pricing abstract supply shortage is a common problem faced by a consumer solutions for allocating the limited supply include rationing queuing interruption and pricing while previous research has examined the welfare losses generated by each solution there is little evidence on their relative magnitudes within a common framework the objective of this paper is tospecify a model of consumer behaviour under service interruption to estimate the exact welfare loss of service interruption the same model is used to estimate the loss of a price increase intended to resolve a supply shortage using water consumption data collected for hong kong we find that relative to pricing service interruption is inefficient for water shortage management

a private property rights regime to replenish a groundwater aquifer groundwater management is often reactive and in some cases the groundwater stock groundwater table of an aquifer may fall below its optimal steady state level before any thought is given to management this paper examines a private property rights regime to restore a groundwater resource to its optimal steady state results from a stochastic dynamic programming model of madera county california show that the private property rights regime recovers about 95 percent of the potential gain from groundwater management

valuing the future recent advances in social discounting the perplexing issue of discounting prescriptive economics requires that unless there are very good reasons to the contrary economic policy should be based on the principle that individuals preferences should count indeed the entire body of welfare economics centres round the formal identity of the statement x prefers a to b and the statement x has higher welfare in a rather than b this combination of a seemingly innocuous and democratic value judgement preferences should count and a formal definition about the meaning of welfare improvement involves many complications the entire history of policy analysis focuses on those complications whose preferences should count over what time period what constitutes a legitimate attenuation of the basic value judgement one of the problem areas concerns timediscounting the process whereby society places a lower value on a future gain or loss than on the same gain or loss occurring now the rationale for time discounting follows logically from the basic value judgement of welfare economics if people s preferences count and if people prefer now to the future those preferences must be integrated into social policy formulation time discounting is thus universal in economic analysis but it remains as it always has controversial the controversy has a parallel in another form of discounting spatial discounting when translated into economic terms the ethical principle

testing the stochastic structure of production a flexible moment based approach conventional production function specifications are shown to impose restrictions on the probability distribution of output that cannot be tested with the conventional models these restrictions have important implications for firm behavior under uncertainty a flexible representation of a firm s stochastic technology is developed based on the moments of the probability distribution of output these moments are a unique representation of the technology and are functions of inputs large sample estimators are developed for a linear moment model that is sufficiently flexible to test the restrictions implied by conventional production function specifications the flexible moment based approach is applied to milk production data the first three moments of output are statistically significant functions of inputs the cross moment restrictions implied by conventional models are rejected

nonlinear strategies in dynamic duopolistic competition with sticky prices abstract we discuss nonlinear strategies in an infinite horizon duopoly game with sticky prices where firms maximize their discounted sum of profit we construct a stationary feedback equilibrium without guessing value functions and feedback strategies that solve the hamilton jacobi equation for this purpose we study the auxiliary equation that is derived from the hamilton jacobi equation we show that the domain of the state space plays an crucial role in characterizing feedback equilibria and discuss several implications of this observation in particular we find that when the upper bound of the state space is not very high previously unknown feedback equilibria emerge

cooperative solution of local externality problems a case of mechanism design applied to irrigation abstract cooperative solutions to ameliorate externalities may be pareto superior compared to noncooperative abatement strategies but such solutions may not be adopted without appropriate institutional mechanisms to achieve cooperative outcomes voluntarily there must be methods of determining cost shares and identifying preferred solutions here the design of a process and a related algorithm are proposed based on concepts of welfare economics and game theory for public goods and externalities simulation of the process for an irrigation externality problem in the central valley of california demonstrates existence of a unanimously preferred solution with improved water quality

the economics of conjunctive groundwater management with stochastic surface supplies abstract groundwater management with stochastic surface flows and artificial recharge is considered theoretical analysis characterizes the decision rules and establishes conditions for convergence of socially optimal and common property withdrawals and pumping lifts to limiting probability distributions an empirical application to kern county california finds that optimal withdrawals are generally increasing in hydraulic head and decreasing in surface flows however nonmonotone behavior is observed in some instances artificial recharge is not observed in the limiting distribution due to an interaction of several factors optimal management implies relatively small gains over unregulated groundwater use when preferences are risk neutral

a private property rights regime for the commons the case for groundwater we compare the social welfare of pumping groundwater under central optimal control to that obtained under a private property rights regime in which firms are granted tradeable permits to the in situ groundwater stock when firms are risk averse both regimes are suboptimal and the matter of which regime yields greater welfare is an empirical one when firms are risk neutral central control dominates the private property rights regime still a stochastic dynamic programming model of madera county california demonstrates that even in this case the private property rights regime is a promising alternative to central control

influence of soil conservation on farm land values worldwide concern for the loss of agricultural soil has led many governments to establish programs to slow the loss of soil from farms mcconnell 1983 has shown however that in the absence of externalities farmer decisions on investment to reduce onfarm soil loss can be socially optimal and concludes p 188 as follows increasing soil loss does not imply that farmers ignore physical production relations if farmers know that the soil base affects farm resale value they will conserve it it suggests that the impact of soil depth on the value of farms be investigated earlier rausser 1980 reached a similar conclusion suggesting that land values which fail to reflect soil quality encourage the farmer to ignore his long run impact on the resource two recent studies failed to find clear cut relationships between soil erosion and farm land prices ervin and mill 1985 942 in a cross section study of farm land prices in page county iowa concluded the group of variables measuring past and future erosion damages and conservation structures did not exhibit large and reliable effects gardner and barrows 1985 studied the capitalization of the value of soil conservation practices into farm land prices in southwestern wisconsin and concluded p 946 the most reasonable conclusion is the most obvious conservation

the demand for irrigation water in the high plains of texas 1957 80 a new method of calculating groundwater pumpage is used to estimate water demand these results are used via the gisser sanchez model to show that pumpage regulation is unlikely to be beneficial in the texas high plains a sensitivity analysis is performed on present value profits under optimal control and competitive schemes using different water demand slope and intercept values the results indicate that the gisser sanchez rule is useful in determining the divergence in pumpage time paths and percentage difference in profits under the two schemes but it is not insightful in determining the nominal difference in profits

the externalities associated with the common property exploitation of groundwater abstract in this paper the rate of groundwater extraction under the common property arrangement is the outcome of a dynamic game played with feedback strategies the analysis clarifies the externalities associated with the common property extraction of groundwater and identifies an risk externality that arises when firms are risk averse identifying the various externalities bears on the development of appropriate forms of groundwater management in particular the risk externality would be unknown to the watermaster of a central control agency suggesting the need for creative decentralized forms of groundwater management

voluntary environmental agreements good or bad news for environmental protection abstract there has been growing interest in the use of voluntary agreements vas as an environmental policy tool this article uses a simple model to determine whether vas are likely to lead to efficient environmental protection we consider cases where polluters are induced to participate either by a background threat of mandatory controls the stick approach or by cost sharing subsidies the carrot approach the results suggest that the overall impact on environmental quality could be positive or negative depending on a number of factors including the allocation of bargaining power the magnitude of the background threat and the social cost of funds

optimal management of a confined groundwater system abstract dynamic programming is applied to a relatively simple economic and hydrologic model of a confined aquifer system in southwest montana to determine an optimal interseasonal allocation schedule the derived decision rule demonstrates the economic advantage of maintaining a confined groundwater system while localized intraseasonal loss of the artesian pressure may occur it is important to maintain this pressure from year to year because of its role in reducing extraction costs the welfare gap as measured by differences in the net present value of economic returns to the basin under an optimal use policy versus an uncontrolled common pool situation is not trivial sensitivity analysis indicates that assumptions about uniformity of land productivity vis a vis their impact on the shape of the returns function the discount rate and the level of electric power rates are particularly critical with respect to the magnitude of the commonality problem

benefits from groundwater management magnitude sensitivity and distribution empirical estimates of benefits from groundwater management are reported for an area in california with heavy reliance on groundwater supplies benefits are quite sensitive to the water demand schedule and interest rate but less sensitive to other parameters however in all cases considered the increases in welfare from groundwater management are less than ten percent tax revenues received under a system of pump taxes are four to five times as large as the benefits from management thus groundwater users gain under a system of quotas but may suffer substantial welfare losses under pump taxes

sulfur dioxide emission reduction of power plants in china current policies and implications abstract electricity generation by conventional fossil fuel power plants have caused severe environmental problems worldwide besides greenhouse gas emissions which has global impacts on the climate there are also pollutant emissions like sulfur dioxide which endanger the local environment in particular for developing countries who often highly rely on coal for power generation due to their resource endowment and the competitive costs of coal the issue of environment pollution caused by coal fired power plants is getting increasingly severe therefore various solutions should be combined and implemented to address the issue including environmental regulation and economic and financial incentives this study conducted an industry survey in 7 coal fired power plants in china to collect detailed data in the field to examine the costs and benefits of flue gas desulfurization currently coal fired power plants in china which install and properly operate flue gas desulfurization equipment can receive 15 yuan mwh premium tariff on top of their on grid tariffs however this study shows that this incentive is insufficient to cover the flue gas desulfurization costs of most of the sample plants more solutions both regulatory and market based should be considered to address this issue firstly under china s current regulated power plants dispatch scheme allocating generation hour based on the pollutant emission would provide strong incentive for sulfur dioxide mitigation secondly it is suggested to provide more supportive financial environment for flue gas desulfurization industry by fiscal supports diverse financing accesses and innovation financial and business models thirdly more environmental regulation tools such as emission cap and emission discharge fees should be set properly and examined carefully to optimize their impacts on economy society and environment finally the analysis and results of this study can also be applied in other fields such as denitration and dedusting of coal fired power plants

econometric estimation of producers risk attitudes general methods are proposed for the identification and econometric estimation of the parameters of the distribution of risk attitudes in a producer population the proposed methods also provide the basis for the development of statistical tests of model specification and of behavioral hypotheses econometric risk attitude estimation is shown to be possible under less restrictive conditions than previously believed a moment based version of the general model is applied to indian data and the econometrically estimated risk attitudes are presented and compared to experimental results for a similar group of producers

technology adoption in the presence of an exhaustible resource the case of groundwater extraction in this paper we integrate technology diffusion within hotelling s exhaustible resource model the modern technology is a conservation technology such as drip irrigation used with groundwater resource quality heterogeneity and rising water prices are responsible for the gradual adoption of the modern technology and under reasonable conditions the diffusion curve is an s shaped function of time without intervention the diffusion process will be slower than is socially optimal and optimal resource use tax will accelerate the diffusion of the conservation technology and slow down excessive resource depletion caused by market failure due to open access conditions

joint risk preference technology estimation with a primal system applied studies of the firm in a risky environment have concentrated either on the firm s technology or on its risk preferences these models result in generally inconsistent and inefficient parameter estimates a primal model is proposed which allows a firm s preferences and technology to be estimated jointly in the presence of risk the model is applied to iowa corn production and estimated technology parameters are compared with those from other approaches modest risk aversion leads to inelastic even backbending per acre supplies and input demands yield heteroskedasticity in inputs leads to supply heteroskedasticity in prices especially for risk neutral firms

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

groundwater focusing on the real issue most studies of the welfare economics of groundwater have focused mainly on the dichotomy between optimal control of groundwater use and no control at all this article argues that under circumstances that generally prevail in semiarid zones assigning property rights to groundwater and permitting the market to determine the allocation of water use can lead to a second best solution an argument is made that if potential users would be allowed to coase bargain with incumbent users on the issuance of new groundwater rights the second best solution is elevated to a pareto optimal solution this article is also a tale of two states water law and performance in new mexico and arizona

implicit prices of soil characteristics for farmland in iowa arguments have long persisted that purchasers pay too much for poor land i e less productive more erosive relative to the higher quality counterpart in other words purchasers are either irrational or poorly informed relative to the differences in land productivity between poor and good farmland similar arguments have been advanced concerning the willingness to pay rent on the part of tenant operators little empirical evidence exists to support or reject this hypothesis farmland appraisals are sometimes cited as evidence to support the contention but such empiricism may indicate more about the quality and biases of appraisers than about the behavior or efficient functioning of the farmland market resolution of this issue is extremely important to the formation of soil conservation policy designed to protect soil productivity irrational behavior on the part of land purchasers may lead one to infer that the market system is failing to recognize adequately the soil productivity consequences of soil erosion if this oversight consistently leads to excessive soil erosion from society s perspective then some form of government intervention may be necessary to protect the welfare of society assuming that such intervention is capable of correcting the market failure

current issues in the economics of groundwater resource management the issue of groundwater management remains a practical concern in many regions throughout the world while water managers continue to grapple with the question of how to manage this resource in this article we attempt to bring the most advanced and appropriate tools to bear on the issue of resource allocation involving groundwater our objective is to demonstrate the state of the art in the literature on ways to think about this complex resource and to deal with the important economic issues emanating from its complexity we present the conceptual framework within which economists examine the elements interacting in the management of groundwater resources indicate why the role of the market is limited with respect to the price of this very complex resource and point to the mechanisms that can pull competitive groundwater price and quality graded quantity of groundwater in line with their equilibrium levels in particular we critically review economic models of groundwater use examine the potential for groundwater management discuss the difficulties encountered in the estimation of the relevant control variables of such models and identify the advantages and limitations of the instruments devised for the efficient use allocation of this resource finally we argue that devised regulatory schemes usually ignore the information and knowledge needed for their implementation and we suggest a core of conditions necessary for successful groundwater management reforms

uncertainty and irreversibility in groundwater resource management abstract optimal exploitation of renewable groundwater resources when extraction affects the probability of occurrence of an irreversible event is studied the term irreversible signifies that the event occurrence renders the resource obsolete it is found that uncertainty concerning the event occurrence has a profound effect under certainty when the stock level below which the event occurrence has a profound effect the optimal state process converges to a unique equilibrium state under uncertainty when the event occurrence level is unknown we identify equilibrium intervals and show that optimal processes initiated elsewhere converge to a boundary of one of these intervals inside an equilibrium interval the expected loss due to the event occurrence is so high that it does not pay to extract in excess of recharge even though under certainty doing so would be beneficial

environmental abatement and intergenerational distribution this paper employs an overlapping generations model to explore the impact of public abatement on private investment and the intergenerational distribution of welfare whereas public abatement benefits old generations in terms of non environmental welfare future generations gain most in terms of environmental welfare the overall benefits tend to be smallest for generations born at the time of the unanticipated policy shock public debt policy however can be employed to ensure that welfare gains are distributed more equally across the various generations such a policy implies that natural capital crowds out man made capital

the market value of water in the ogallala aquifer the ogallala aquifer also known as the ogallala formation or the high plains aquifer is a 174 000 square mile body of water that underlies parts of colorado kansas nebraska new mexico oklahoma south dakota texas and wyoming the ogallala contains about 3 5 billion acre feet of water symposium ii 1984 but in many areas the aquifer has been declining from continued deep well pumping sloggett and dickason 1986 the aquifer receives little recharge especially in the southern portion and as such represents a finite nonrenewable resource stock as a result of the concerns of residents of the high plains states over declines in the ogallala aquifer congress authorized the secretary of commerce to conduct a six state regional resources study of the ogallala in 1976 high plains associates 1982 the study indicated even under the most effective water conservation program more than a million acres of farmland then

multicrop production decisions in western irrigated agriculture the role of water price applying a model of the multioutput firm econometric results are reported for irrigated production in four multistate regions of the american west cross sectional microdata from the farm and ranch irrigation survey and limited dependent variable methods are used to estimate crop choice supply land allocation and water demand functions for field crops farm level water demand is decomposed into the sum of crop level water demands and crop level demands are further separated into an extensive margin land allocations and intensive margin short run water use response to water price measured as groundwater pumping cost occurs primarily at the extensive margin

energy backstop endogeneity and the optimal use of groundwater to meet the growing demand for freshwater many regions have increased groundwater pumping in recent years resulting in declining groundwater levels worldwide a promising development to address these declines is technical change regarding groundwater substitutes such as desalination and wastewater recycling however because these technologies are energy intensive optimal implementation also depends on future energy price trends we provide an operational model for the case of reverse osmosis seawater desalination in an application to the pearl harbor aquifer in hawaii we find that allowing the cost of desalination to increase at an average annual rate of 2 4 over the next century results in a substantially steeper efficiency price path for water the higher prices decrease optimal groundwater extraction and induce a slower head drawdown over a longer period of time thereby delaying the transition to desalination by over 30 years because the rise in energy costs exacerbates efficiency losses from under pricing any delay in implementing efficiency pricing will cause either a greater future increase in prices or the need for rationing reforming prices sooner rather than later may be more politically feasible given that consumers may be more amenable to a gradual rise in prices today than a sudden doubling or tripling of prices ten years from now using this as a foundation we outline a research agenda for extending the framework to other groundwater substitutes and for adapting to climate change

valuing the future one of the most controversial areas of economics is the practice of discounting attaching a lower weight to future costs and benefits than present costs and benefits discounting appears to offend notions of sustainable development and the interests of future generations recent advances in the theory of discounting hold out strong hope that the tyranny of discounting can be avoided through the use of time varying discount rates tvdrs this paper reviews the recent rationales for tvdrs and applies the results to issues such as nuclear power and global warming control

pareto improving water management over space and time the honolulu case we model welfare gains from efficient allocation of groundwater over space and time relative to the status quo policy of financial cost recovery in order to promote political feasibility an intertemporal compensation plan is devised that renders the reform pareto improving gainers from the reform finance the compensation in proportion to their benefits through a block pricing scheme for the honolulu case only 7 of the 441 million in gains to winners is needed to compensate losers from the reform future winners from the reform also repay the deficit created by the compensation package much as state and local governments finance capital improvements copyright 2009 oxford university press

dynamic resource management intertemporal substitution and risk aversion we consider resource management with recursive preferences these generalize expected utility while eliminating some well known difficulties monotonicity and convergence properties of optimal decision rules are established using lattice programming methods empirical applications are rangeland and groundwater management decreasing the intertemporal elasticity of substitution implies greater lower resource usage with limited abundant stocks this moderates stock evolution and stabilizes consumption increasing risk aversion implies the same or reduced usage over the state space intertemporal substitution has a substantial effect on the optimal decision rule and a moderate effect on the limiting distribution while risk aversion has a very small effect

agricultural land markets and soil erosion policy relevance and conceptual issues farmland values dwarf all other asset values in agricultural production therefore understanding the formation and roles of farmland prices should command high research priority while we have seen some clarification of the pricing of farmland through time from an aggregate perspective other questions remain enigmas one is the relationship among land prices soil erosion and conservation investments understanding that relationship is critical to designing effective public soil conservation policy in the past the notion that the farmland market was generally not sensitive to varying erosion conditions was seemingly endorsed without systematic data analysis miranowski and hammes note the paucity of good empirical evidence for testing the effect of erosion on farmland prices two probable reasons for this lack of empirical study are worth citing first the legitimacy of public soil conservation assistance programs was not challenged then unlike the present thus there was not a compelling social need to understand whether farmland markets were transmitting proper signals to landowners with regard to erosion s effects second thorough and rigorous empirical tests of the relationship between land prices and erosion or conservation conditions are painstakingly detailed work fraught with many conceptual and measurement complications this paper has three sections in the first the policy context surrounding land prices and soil erosion is discussed we then report some empirical work on the erosion land price question with emphasis on specification issues surrounding an implicit price model implications for soil conservation policy and further research close the discussion

the design of stable international environmental agreements economic theory and political economy international environmental agreements typically strive for the solution of a common property resource dilemma since the sovereignty of states precludes external enforcement international environmental agreements must be self enforcing game theoretical models explain why rewards and punishments imposed through the environmental externality generally fail to enforce full cooperation therefore environmental treaties incorporate provisions that enhance the incentives for participation such as transfers sanctions and linkage to other negotiation topics in international politics moreover interaction with markets and governments as well as the rules and procedures adopted in the negotiation process influence the design and the effectiveness of an international environmental agreement

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance