Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Water Management in Agriculture written by Mani Rouhi Rad and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Water and Climate Economics written by Nicholas Anthony Potter and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes three chapters on the economics of climate, water resources, agricultural production, and conflict. Chapter one is an introduction. In chapter two I provide an analysis of the impact of exposure to temperature on returns to irrigated and nonirrigated cropland. Chapter three is a theoretical approach to understand the economic implications of the forfeiture of water rights for nonuse. Chapter four looks at the relationship between drought, conflict, and governance using a disaggregated spatial analysis.Chapter two is on temperature effects on snowpack-dependent surfacewater irrigated production systems in the western US. Irrigated production in that region is characterized by a diverse mix of high value crops, so producers may have more of an ability to adapt to hotter temperatures. I focus on county rental prices for irrigated and nonirrigated cropland and find that economic returns to cropland begin to decrease starting at about 25℗ʻC for irrigated acres and 20℗ʻC for nonirrigated acres.Chapter three covers the economic history that led to the creation of forfeiture policies for the nonuse of surface water rights in the western US. I develop a theory of water rights under prior appropriations with forfeiture and use it to examine why forfeiture policies were adopted in all western states that allocate water via prior appropriation. Forfeiture reduced risk to junior water rights holders and limited speculative water claims, but did so at the cost of increased transaction costs when trading water rights. While these were small when remaining water resources were available to be claimed, they are significantly more costly when all water in a basin has been allocated.In chapter four I combine a spatiotemporal grid of drought and geolocated conflict with several measures of governance characteristics to examine how governance mediates the relationship between drought and conflict. I find little evidence of a relationship between drought and conflict in Africa and Latin and South America. In countries that are more democratic or in which doing business is easier, an increase in drought reduces the likelihood of riot incidence. Other governance measures have no discernible effect.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Water Rights written by Karin Audrey Donhowe and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally, in the third chapter I explore differences in Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) water management across its projects. BOR delivers water to farmers in Western states based on long-term contracts with irrigation districts that specify how much land can be irrigated, the quantity of water allotted per acre, and terms of payment. There is variation across Reclamation projects in terms of rights ownership, water allocation, and the ability to transfer water. These areas of institutional variation affect the security of farmers' claims to water, and security of rights in turn affects investment decisions, crop choice, and the value of water rights. This paper documents water management across five of the largest BOR irrigation projects and evaluates the implications of the variation.

Download or read book Three Essays on Risk Management and Irrigation Water Demand in Agriculture written by Pin Lu and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both extensive (share of insured acres in total insurable acres) and intensive (coverage level choice) margin participation rates in the U.S. crop insurance program have increased due to generous subsidies. On a national scale, this program has been well rated to satisfy the actuarial fairness requirement by USDA Risk Management Agency. However, sizeable spatial heterogeneity remains across the Great Plains and Corn Belt regions. If subsidies were to be reduced in the future because of financial constraints, such heterogeneity might be detrimental to the sustainability of the crop insurance program. A central theme of this dissertation is to investigate how farmers make participation decisions when risk factors exist. In a separate but related line of work, this dissertation also explores the irrigation water usage in the Great Lakes region because farmers' irrigation behavior reflects their risk preferences and impacts their incentives for enrolling in the program. The dissertation consists of three essays on farmers' decisions regarding premium mispricing, basis risk, and irrigation water usage. The first essay proposes a novel resampling procedure to estimate farm-level actuarially fair premiums. The resampling procedure mainly contains two parts: (i) semi-parametric quantile regression; and (ii) rejection method. Many previous studies explore whether county-level mispricing exists based on the historical loss ratio records. However, we can identify farm-level mispricing by imputing actuarially fair premiums based on historical yield records, consistent with theory. We find that farmers with lower land quality cropland paid fewer premiums than they should, but a contrary case happens for farmers with higher land quality cropland. Empirical evidence shows farmers may be more concerned about mispricing than subsidy transfer. Regression results support a conclusion that such farm-level mispricing deters farmers' crop insurance demand. Our analysis sheds light on the policy-making that: (i) mispricing may be a substitution of subsidy so mitigating mispricing can maintain high participation while saving subsidies; and (ii) imputation of premiums based on historical yield records can apply.The second essay focuses on the impact of basis risk on participation rates in the U.S. crop insurance program. In recent years, basis risk has been increasingly recognized as an essential driver for deterring insurance uptake. Most research concentrates on index insurance contracts; however, few investigate the effect of mismatch between cash and futures markets on farmers' insurance decisions. We first build a conceptual model to show farmers' acreage response to basis risk within the expected utility framework. Next, we apply the Fractional Probit with Control Function for the empirical analysis and find that the effects of basis risk on participation rates are significantly negative for nearly all insurance contracts. Our analysis implies that: (i) to remove basis risk, revision for revenue contract may be considered; (ii) subsidy structure may be adjusted to be consistent with the underlying basis risk. The third essay investigates irrigation water usage in the Great Lakes region. Although the water conservation policy was implemented, there has been an upward trend in irrigation water demand from 2003 to 2018, including irrigated acres and total water usage. We employ firm-level irrigation data to examine what factors impact farmers' response to irrigation water usage. We find that: (i) price elasticities vary significantly according to model specifications and water costs; (ii) demand at both extensive (irrigated acres) and intensive (water application per acre) margins is input price inelastic; and (iii) price elasticities are homogeneous across crops but heterogeneous across states. For the policy-making, if there is a 10% tax on irrigation water cost, total water usage decreases by about 4% for corn and soybean, respectively.

Download or read book Essays on Economics of Water Resources Management written by Chan Chang and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Water written by Nicholas William Hagerty and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis studies three questions in the economics of water resource management. Chapter 1 estimates the economic gains available from greater use of large-scale water markets in California. I develop a revealed-preference empirical approach that exploits observed choices in the existing water market, and I apply it to comprehensive new data on California’s water economy. This approach overcomes the challenge posed by transaction costs, which insert an unobservable wedge between observed prices and marginal valuations. First, I directly estimate transaction costs and use them to recover equilibrium marginal valuations. Then, I use supply shocks to estimate price elasticities of demand, which govern how marginal valuations vary with quantity. I find even a relatively modest market scenario would create additional benefits of $480 million per year, which can be weighed against both the benefits of existing market restrictions and the setup costs of larger-scale markets. Chapter 2 estimates the possible costs of industrial water pollution to agriculture in India, focusing on 63 industrial sites identified by the central government as “severely polluted.” I exploit the spatial discontinuity in pollution concentrations that these sites generate along a river. First, I show that these sites do in fact coincide with a large, discontinuous rise in pollutant concentrations in the nearest river. Then, I find some evidence that agricultural revenues may be substantially lower in districts immediately downstream of polluting sites, relative to districts immediately upstream of the same site in the same year. These results suggest that damages to agriculture could represent a major cost of water pollution. Chapter 3, co-authored with Ariel Zucker, presents an experimental protocol for a project that pays smallholder farmers in India to reduce their consumption of groundwater. This project will test the effectiveness of payments for voluntary conservation – a policy instrument that may be able to sidestep regulatory constraints common in developing countries. It will also measure the price response of demand for groundwater in irrigated agriculture, a key input to many possible reforms. Evidence from a pilot suggests that the program may have reduced groundwater pumping by a large amount, though confidence intervals are wide.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Groundwater Extraction for Agriculture written by Lisa Marie Pfeiffer and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Climate Water and Carbon written by Francis Muamba Mulangu and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: This dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay seeks to estimate the impact of climate change on household's welfare on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Unlike previous studies, the approach used in this essay limits the bias from unobservables by applying the analysis in a relatively small geographical area composed of homogeneous farmers with similar cultures, agricultural systems, and market influence. However, these farmers inhabit places that have relatively large differences in rainfall. The data for the analysis were gathered from a random sample of over 200 households in 15 villages and observation posts to measure the precipitation from rainfall were placed in each of the surveyed villages. The results indicate that Mt. Kilimanjaro's agriculture is vulnerable to precipitation variation, especially November precipitations. Farm vulnerability is heterogeneous across space, crops, and monthly precipitation. The study finds some evidence about the ability of irrigation usage to reduce crop vulnerability to precipitation change. With regards to household's welfare, we simulated crop revenue response to a median of seven Global Climate Models (GCMs), and found evidence that climate change will negatively affect household's welfare on Mt. Kilimanjaro. The second essay analyzes the potential benefits of introducing improved irrigation schemes on Mt. Kilimanjaro to help rain-dependent farmers cope with the risks of climate change. The study uses the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to elicit farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for eliminating the risks of crop loss by accessing improved irrigation schemes. The study makes important contributions to both policies in Africa and the applied welfare literature. The policy contribution consists of valuation of improved irrigation in the presence of climate change risks. The applied welfare contribution consists of empirical evidence about the impact of farmers' risk beliefs, and self-protective actions on welfare valuation. The study finds that farmers' expected increase in revenues associated with the improved irrigation scheme will equal the cost of building it within 8 to 10 years. The purpose of the third essay is twofold. First, the essay seeks to determine the potential for soil carbon sequestration on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Second, the essay aims at estimating the marginal cost of sequestering soil carbon on Mt. Kilimanjaro. To answer these questions, the essay develops a Markov decision model that maximizes the net present value (NPV) of farm profit by allowing the farmer to choose optimal farm management subject to crop yield, soil carbon stock, and exogenous carbon price. The essay concludes that there is potential for economically viable carbon sequestration contracts on Mt. Kilimanjaro. At $20 per metric ton of carbon or $8.62 per hectare, 0.085 million metric tons of carbon could be sequestered per year because farmers would find it optimal to practice no-tillage cultivation of grains and retain some crop residues.

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Agricultural and Residential Water Management written by Oliver R. Browne and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ensuring the efficient allocation of water resources among end users has become crucial in light of increasing climate variability and the high capital and environmental costs of developing new supply. However, within the two largest sectors of water consumption -- agricultural users and residential users -- the different nature of water use and governing institutions gives rise to different challenges in allocating water across competing demands. This dissertation comprises two essays, both case studies evaluating policies to improve water management in each sector respectively. Informed by different settings, I use novel data and methods to estimate impacts of the distinct reforms. The two chapters provide lessons about how policymakers in either sector can improve water management in the future.

Download or read book Economics of Water Management in Agriculture written by Thomas Bournaris and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes a set of papers from distinguished scholars who critically examine economic issues relating to the relationship between water and agriculture, with a special focus on irrigation. Employing state of the art methodologies, they address the most relevant issues in water policy. The volume offers a wide spectrum of innovative approac

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Water Quality in the United States written by David Andrew Keiser and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Water Resource Economics and Agricultural Extension written by Steven Charles Buck and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation discusses topics in the microeconomics of water resource economics and agricultural extension. In one chapter I use a hedonic model to explain the price of land transactions, and from this an implied value of irrigation water is inferred. In a separate chapter I develop measures of willingness-to-pay for water supply reliability measures, and estimate how consumers respond to changes in the price of residential water. My final chapter develops a model of a farmer's decision to invest in learning from agricultural technicians about a new integrated pest management technology that improves yields and reduces agricultural run-off of pesticides into surface waterways. Each chapter is grounded in microeconomic models of decision-making.

Download or read book Frontiers in Water Resource Economics written by Renan-Ulrich Goetz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the books published previously in the field of water resource eco nomics focus on particular aspects of water economics such as institutions, pricing or water markets, but none of them have given particular attention to methodological questions. However, the applied methodology within economic research has made some remarkable advances over the last 10-20 years. Some of these advances are of particular interest to the field of water economics. Therefore, we think that a book that focusing on methodological advances within the field of water resource economics and showing how these advances can be applied in economic analysis of water issues makes a nice complement to the existing literature in this field. We identified five areas where we consider the methodological advances to be of particular importance: 1) asymmetric information and game theory, 2) un certainty, 3) space, 4) water quality and 5) production and technology adoption. The selected papers for the book fall entirely within these categories. The book ''Frontiers in Water Resource Economics" draws to a great extent on papers which were presented at the 7^^ Conference of the International Water and Re source Economics Consortium, June 3-5,2001 held in Girona, Catalonia, Spain, This conference was jointly organized with the 4^^ Conference of Environmen tal and Resource Economics by the Department of Economics, University of Girona.

Download or read book Essays on Water Resource Economics written by Daniel A. Brent and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A canonical example in economics of the difference between marginal and total value is the diamond-water paradox. The high price of diamonds is derived from their rarity; whereas the price of water is low due to its abundance, even though it is essential to sustain human life. Scarcity, rather than abundance, better characterizes water availability for many people and this dissertation studies how applied economic principles can be utilized to manage water resources. The first chapter estimate the costs of water volatility in the agricultural sector through a hedonic analysis of heterogeneous water rights. Security for water rights is capitalized into the value of agricultural land, which informs the magnitude and distributional welfare effects of droughts. Tests for an endogenous changepoint fails find a time-varying price premium, indicating that the costs of increased water volatility due to climate change are not manifested in agricultural property markets. The second and third chapters focus on economic and behavioral incentives in urban municipal water demand. Chapter 2 presents a disaggregated model of water demand to separately estimate intensive and extensive margin demand elasticity. Identification is achieved through a novel method merging remotely sensed satellite data on vegetative cover with water metering records. The time series of vegetative cover captures changes in landscape over time and identifies the extensive margin elasticity - a parameter that has only been estimated implicitly through the difference in short run and long run demand. Households that maintain green lawns are less responsive to prices than households either change landscapes or have a mixed landscape. Higher water rates increase the probability of converting to low water-intensive landscapes, which in turn is a major driver of long-run demand. The extensive margin with respect to changing landscapes comprises 7%-48% of total elasticity for households with significant outdoor water use. The final chapter examines the impact of non-pecuniary incentives stemming from the behavioral economics literature on water demand. In a randomized field experiment social comparisons are found to significantly decrease water demand with substantial heterogeneity both across and within utilities. The utility with the highest average treatment effect saved three times as much water in percentage terms as the utility with the lowest average treatment effect. Higher users are more responsive to the program and there are important interactions between social norms and existing utility conservation programs. Water resources face stress due to population growth, rising incomes, and climate change and these stressors will only increase in the future. This dissertation addresses several key issues in agricultural and residential that aim to increase knowledge and aid public policy of managing water resources in times of scarcity.

Download or read book Economics of Water Resources From Regulation to Privatization written by Nicolas Spulber and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to develop a general economic model which integrates the quantity and quality issues of water resource management and to provide, along with a detailed criticism of the policy instruments now in use, alternative proposals concerning the efficient allocation and distribution of water. In particular we treat water as a multi-product commodity where the market plays a major role in determining water quality-discriminant pricing and its value to the user. We examine the process of moving from administrative allocation and regulation to privatization of the water industry as the key element in promoting effective competition and in providing economic incentives for greater efficiency. Water quantity and quality, considered independently of each other, have been the subject of numerous studies during the last twenty years. Let us recall briefly the most outstanding among them. A variety of models have been constructed concerning the optimal scheduling and sequence of water-supply projects: dynamic programming for solving multi-bjective functions in water resource development; planning models for coordinating regional water-resource supply and demand, etc. Other studies have devised water-quality management models, including multi-period design of regional or municipal wastewater systems; cost-allocation methods to induce effluent dischargers to participate in regional water systems; models to predict the quality of effluent (in particular, whether it meets certain established standards); models for finding optimal waste-removal policies at each of the polluting sources, and so on.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Water Quality and Availability written by Saman Olfati and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Water Resource Economics written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: