Three Essays Addressing Production Economics and Irrigation PDF Download
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Author: Mark Sperow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Alfalfa
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Author: Mark Sperow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Alfalfa
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Author: Mani Rouhi Rad
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Hilary Beth Soldati
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 93
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This dissertation consists of three essays that provide insights into the economics of water across different dimensions of the resource and its role in the state of California. The first essay examines the social welfare impacts of variation in irrigation supplies that are available through major public projects. Discussion of the value and significance of the irrigation services that are made available through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta often focus on the immediate impacts to agricultural production and direct farm jobs. This essay, however, considers the reach of these impacts by evaluating how agriculturally based communities are effected by shortages in irrigation supplies. The second and third essays shift attention toward urban water usage. Methods of forecasting urban water demand are reconsidered and a suggestion is made for an alternative approach to evaluating the predictive power of demand models in the second essay. Finally, the third essay measures the effect of consumption analytics and social norm messaging on household decision-making around water usage. Taken together, these three essays address some of the key features of California's water economy. While there exists much research that measures the impact of precipitation shocks on agricultural regions, whether in production or in other outcomes, less research is available that specifically focuses on the impacts of variation in developed irrigation supplies. Given that developing irrigation infrastructure is oft regarded as an adaptation strategy for climate change, it is worth understanding how shocks in the supply of managed water effect individual and regional outcomes. The first essay exploits exogenous variation in the availability of California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta irrigation water to estimate the impact on crime rates for the agricultural counties that use this input. This research provides suggestive evidence in support of the hypothesis that reductions in the availability of this irrigation supply lead to a socially and economically significant increase in both property and violent crime rates. Empirical results support the argument that farm jobs is the mostly likely mechanism, with suggestive evidence that demographic changes are also important. Urban water managers rely heavily on forecasts of water consumption to determine management decisions and investment choices. Typical forecasts rely on simple models whose criteria for selection has little to do with their performance in predicting out-of-sample consumption levels. This essay demonstrate this issue by comparing forecast models selected on the basis of their ability to perform well in-sample versus out-of-sample. Results highlight the benefits of developing out-of-sample evaluation criteria to ascertain model performance. Using annual data on single-family residential water consumption in Southern California, this research illustrates how prediction ability varies according to model evaluation method. Using a training dataset, this analysis finds that models ranking highly on in-sample performance significantly over-estimated consumption $(10\%-25\%)$ five years out from the end of the training dataset relative to observed demands five years out from the end of the training dataset. Whereas, the top models selected using the out-of-sample criteria came within 1\% of the actual total consumption. Notably, projections of future demand for the in-sample models indicate increasing aggregate water consumption over a 25-year period, which contrasts the downward trend predicted by the out-of-sample models. The third essay estimates how household-level water consumption may be impacted by the distribution of Home Water Use Reports (HWURs) by Dropcountr (DC), a digital and web-based consumption analytics platform. Similar to Opower in the energy sector, DC offers social comparison, consumption analytics, and conservation information to residential accounts, primarily through digital communications. Having initiated relationships with several California utilities, as well as major Texas and Colorado providers, the effect of these programs may be measured and will contribute to three areas of academic literature: 1) the study of social norms and moral suasion on consumption behavior, in general; 2) the effects of such methods in the water sector, in specific; and 3) understanding alternatives to price mechanisms in demand-side management of water resources. This research discusses the potential of this type of information to generate measurable effects of interest, both to researchers and to water managers alike. Particular focus will be given to results with a mid-sized California utility and a major Texas provider. Early results indicate an economically and statistically significant $5-8\%$ and $3-4\%$ reduction in average monthly household water consumption for the California and the Texas utility, respectively, for the typical household under treatment of the DC program.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 678
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Author: Eric S. Owusu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Productivity differentials across gender and sowing dates in smallholder systems have been of interest to development policy, and I revisit the subjects in the context of groundnut, an important food and cash legume in Malawi. Using cross-sectional data, I address bias from observables through matching and production technology differences through recent stochastic meta-frontier (SMF) techniques. I deal with unobservable bias associated with choice of sowing date through the application of the selectivity-corrected stochastic frontier (SC-SPF) model. Also, owing to increasing pressure on water resources and the need to save irrigation water, I exploit a rich county panel of input-output census data, irrigation withdrawals, and climatic and soil factors to examine irrigation water productivity across time and space in the United States (U.S.). An irrigation productivity index (IPI) is calculated based on technology parameters generated with a novel panel stochastic production frontier (SPF) estimator. The results reveal different production technologies in use by male and female managers, and among farmers who sow early and late. Significant gender-related technology and managerial gaps translate into significant male advantages in land and total factor productivities (TFP). In addition, application of both the SC-SPF and SMF frameworks is supported, and early sowing leads to larger gains in output, while that group of farmers also exhibits higher managerial performance. Moreover, the results show that irrigation water productivity exhibits considerable variation across time and space and is driven by input deepening in the Corn Belt and Great Lakes, as well as the Plains, regions of the U.S. The national growth rate of irrigation water productivity has been rising since 2007, although growth has slowed in the past five years. Policy-wise, closing the productivity gap will require expanding female production possibilities through use of improved inputs and practices and enhancing managerial skills and know-how through extension. The findings provide clear support for early sowing as an attractive option that could be incorporated into extension delivery for smallholders. Increasing the growth of irrigation water productivity in the U.S. will require bridging the East-West productivity gap through increasing input deepening, especially in the U.S. West.
Author: Mary E. Renwick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351159275
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 547
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Water is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity in many parts of the world. Population growth plus a growing appetite for larger quantities of cheap water quality as a result of urban, industrial, and agricultural pollution coupled with increasing environmental demands have further reduced usable suppliers. This book brings together thirty of the best economic articles addressing water scarcity issues within the US and Mexico. By touching on a number of different issues, this volume clearly articulates the need for improving existing institutional arrangements as well as for developing new arrangements to address growing water scarcity problems.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drought
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Author: Dallas Wayne Wood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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Author: Lisa Marie Pfeiffer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Author: Gabriela Perez-Quesada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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The depletion of groundwater stocks reduces the flow of economic value and the production of goods from the resource. This dissertation quantifies these effects in the context of the High Plains Aquifer in the central US. One particular challenge in estimating these effects that we overcome is that feedback effects from irrigation behavior affect resource conditions, which creates an endogeneity concern. We also provide new insights on the potential of collective efforts by irrigators to manage the resource. We study how heterogeneity in resource and user characteristics affect their individuals' willingness to support efforts to collectively reduce water use. The first chapter estimates how changes in groundwater stocks affect the returns to agricultural land. We avoid bias from feedback effects by exploiting hydrologic variation in pre-development saturated thickness that was determined by natural processes in previous geological eras. Simulation results reveal that the average annual present value of returns to land are expected to decrease in the High Plains region by $120.6 million in 2050, and by $250.5 million in 2100. The most severe decreases in returns to land are expected to occur in Texas, Kansas, and Colorado. When the initial saturated thickness is less than 70 feet, most of the economic impact (63%) of a decrease in the stock of groundwater occurs through an adjustment in irrigated acreage (extensive margin), while 37% occurs through reduced irrigated rental rates (intensive margin). When saturated thickness is larger, nearly all of the response is at the extensive margin. The second chapter examines how observed differences in the stock of groundwater affect corn production. To account for the endogeneity of groundwater stock, we exploit variation in current saturated thickness due to variation in pre-development saturated thickness. Simulation results reveal that the annual production of corn would decrease by 48.1 million bushels in the north portion of the High Plains Aquifer due to a uniform 10 ft decrease in saturated thickness, whereas the annual production of corn would decrease by 15.7 million bushels in the south. Further, we find that when initial saturated thickness is less than 70 ft, most of the impact on corn production of a decrease in the stock of groundwater occurs through an adjustment in irrigated acres in both the north and the south. When saturated thickness is larger than 70 ft, then the adjustment is mostly through a change in cropping patterns on irrigated land in the south but still through irrigated acres in the north. The third chapter uses unique data obtained from consequential stated preference surveys in Kansas to explore the factors that influence farmers preferred reductions in groundwater use through a water conservation program implemented by a Groundwater Management District. Our results reveal that farmers located in areas where the aquifer is more depleted support larger reductions in groundwater use. But we also find that characteristics of the users matter as much or more than the status of the aquifer in determining support. Opposition to reductions in water use are strongest among farmers who strongly agree that water rights are a private property, landlords and those who irrigate a larger proportion of their farm. Further, we evaluate farmers' preferences for the methods of assigning water allocations. We find that none of the options are preferred by a majority of farmers and there is no clear evidence that aquifer characteristics or observed farmer characteristics are the key factors affecting the probability that a farmer ranks a method as the best option. This makes it difficult for groundwater managers to identify which method is more likely to be considered fair by farmers. Our results are informative for managers of water throughout Kansas, the High Plains and other regions where conserving water resources is a high priority and localized and stakeholder-driven conservation plans could be a solution.
