It is usually taken for granted that the existence of water markets allows economic efficiency gains to be achieved at the expense of equity losses. This paper addresses the issue by analysing the functioning of the irrigation communities in pre-1950s eastern Spain. While in some of them the...

By custom, in several different regions of Europe tenants were the owners of the improvements they carried out on the farm. As a result of such customs, rents usually remained below the Ricardian equilibrium over long periods of time and therefore cannot be used to calculate the total factor...