Estimating the Potential Water Transfer Prices Using Price Endogenous Theory

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the potential market price for the transfer of water among sectors in the Northern Taiwan region. This region is the major semiconductor and information technology product manufacturing area in Taiwan and plays an important role in contributing to domestic GDP. To this end, a regional water endogenous price economic model using a nonlinear programming approach is adopted in which the activity of transferring water from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector in a water market is taken into consideration. In addition, the potential water transfer price is estimated using this empirical model under the assumption of social welfare maximization. The scenario results prove that the activity of transferring water from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector could improve the benefits both in the water market and the agricultural sector. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010