We examine the long transition from water to steam power in US manufacturing, focusing on early users of mechanical … powered entrants and agglomeration, as water powered incumbents faced switching barriers primarily from sunk costs. Estimating … exit, switching barriers remained influential for aggregate steam adoption throughout the 19th century, as water power …

This paper formulates and estimates a household-level, billing-cycle water demand model under increasing block prices … household demographics in the utility's service territory to recover the impact of these factors on water demand. An index of … models are used to compute the distribution of utility-level water demand and revenues for any possible price schedule …

The Clean Water Act (CWA) significantly improved surface water quality, but at a cost exceeding the estimated benefits …

have spent nearly $5 trillion ($2017) to provide clean rivers, lakes, and drinking water, or annual spending of 0.8 percent … of U.S. GDP in most years. Yet over half of rivers and substantial shares of drinking water systems violate standards …, and polls for decades have listed water pollution as Americans' number one environmental concern. We assess the history …

The paper provides an integrated framework to assess water markets in terms of their institutional underpinnings and … the three 'pillars' of integrated water resource management: economic efficiency, equity and environmental sustainability …. This framework can be used: (1) to benchmark different water markets; (2) to track performance over time; and (3) to …

This study evaluates two interventions for residential water conservation. Comparing households across an enforcement … substantial water conservation but also shift some consumption from regulated to unregulated hours within the week. In contrast …, we show using data from a randomized experiment with the same customers that normative Home Water Reports reduce water …

The quality and inequality of US drinking water investments have gained attention after recent environmental disasters … Drinking Water Act with the targeting of congressional drinking water earmarks ("pork barrel" spending). Earmarks are often …, Hispanic, and low-income communities, partly due to targeting water systems serving large populations. Earmark and loan …