In the face of growing management problems and conflicts over increasing demands and dwindling or increasingly variable supplies of surface and groundwater, the need for revising the conventional water resource allocation methods has been increasingly felt among natural resource managers and...

This paper demonstrates a method for reconstructing flexible form production functions using minimal disaggregated data sets. The policy focus of our approach puts emphasis on the ability of the model to reproduce the existing production system and predict the disaggregate outcomes of policy...

This paper demonstrates a robust method for achieving disaggregation in the estimation of flexible-form farm-level multi-input production functions using minimally-specified data sets. Since our ultimate goal is to address important questions related to the distributional effects of policy...

Inefficient performance of irrigation systems not only leads to a waste of water resources, but may also affect agriculture production, especially in regions facing a water stress problem. In rural China, only 40% of the water allocated to irrigation is effectively used, a figure much lower than...

The Government of India had launched the National Biofuel Mission in the year 2003 as an initiative to limitthe country’s dependence on crude oil imports. An integral part of this mission is the Biodiesel Blendingprogram and Jatropha, a tree-borne biodiesel yielding crop, is the cornerstone of...

Paper replaced with revised version 06/03/08

In California, the tremendous spatial and temporal variation in precipitation suggests that flexible contractual arrangements, such as option contracts, would increase allocative efficiency of water over time and space. Under such arrangements, a water agency pays an option premium for the right...

Risk and reliability dominate water supply discussions in the arid western United States. In the past, water managers built additional storage to mitigate supply risk. The optimal, least expensive storage sites have now been taken, and there are strong, environmental objections to new...