The paper considers the econometric modeling of technology adoption when crop choice is simultaneous. Bivariate probit is used to estimate a model of irrigation technology choice and land allocation using a unique field-level data set from California's Central Valley. Special attention is paid...

Agriculture is by far the dominant user of water in the western United States and in nearly all arid regions of the planet. Despite this fact and despite a growing push to rely on price mechanisms for rationalizing water allocation, there are few econometric studies of agricultural water demand...

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...

Paper replaced with revised version 06/03/08

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...

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...

This article describes the influence of input quality and scarcity, environmental conditions, human capital, water price, and other variables on adoption rates for modern irrigation technologies in terms of both speed and extent of application. An empirical model is developed to apply these...

This paper examines the cost structure of emissions abatement through different types of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects. Alternative models for abatement costs are specified and estimated using CDM project-specific data. Empirical results indicate that there exist economies of scale...