Estimating the Value of Water Use Permits: A hedonic approach applied to farmland in the southeastern US

In the State of Georgia, agricultural irrigation permits in the Flint River Basin had been routinely granted until a moratorium was placed on permit issuance in 1999. This research exploits this policy change within a hedonic pricing framework to estimate the value of irrigation rights in the Southeast US. While the value of irrigation rights has been studied extensively in the western US, differences in property rights and legal regimes, as well as a lack of established water-rights markets in the East, leave us with little information regarding the value of irrigation rights in this setting.