• DOI:10.1007/978-1-4615-4028-1_41
• Corpus ID: 167158434

Water Quality and the Economic Efficiency of Appropriative Water Rights

@inproceedings{Kanazawa1991WaterQA,
  title={Water Quality and the Economic Efficiency of Appropriative Water Rights},
  author={Mark T. Kanazawa},
  year={1991}
}

• Mark T. Kanazawa
• Published 1991
• Economics

Many economists have studied the economic efficiency of appropriative water rights under conditions of common access to surface water. The studies in this literature often focus on the issue of how to define appropriative rights in order to promote economic efficiency. An important lack in existing studies is that they typically assume constant water quality, despite the fact that declining water quality is associated with the consumptive use of water from many western rivers. This chapter extends existing analyses by introducing variable water quality into an economic model of appropriative rights, and derives some results involving the efficient definition of appropriative rights under conditions of varying water quality. In addition, the feasibility of integrating water quality considerations into the administration of appropriative rights in California are discussed through a detailed examination of that State’s rights-granting institutions and procedures.