In river systems, costly upstream pollution abatement creates downstream welfare gains. Absent adequate agreement on how to share the gains, upstream regions lack incentives to reduce pollution levels. We develop a model that makes explicit the impact of water quality on production benefits and...

In river systems, costly upstream pollution abatement creates downstream welfare gains. Absent adequate agreement on how to share the gains, upstream regions lack incentives to reduce pollution levels. We develop a model that makes explicit the impact of water quality on production benefits and...

Cost-benefit analyses are commonly applied to assess the net welfare effects of policies to improve surface water quality. These analyses often disregard the biophysical fact that from implementation of policy measures to resulting improvements on water quality there will typically be...