Fresh water supplies increasingly are under stress in many parts of the world due to rising populations, higher per capita incomes and corresponding consumption, greater environmental concerns, and the effects of climate change. Water rights and markets are part of the institutional menus for...

Even though the assigning of the formal property rights are the most obvious response to externalities involving the environment and natural resources, they typically are not the first action taken. Indeed, they often are the last, coming only after a crisis. Why is that? One reason is that...

Even though the assigning of the formal property rights are the most obvious response to externalities involving the environment and natural resources, they typically are not the first action taken. Indeed, they often are the last, coming only after a crisis. Why is that? One reason is that...

Water markets in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and the US west are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources among competing uses. Both locations have been in the forefront of the development of water markets with defined water rights and conveyance...

There are both high resource and political costs in defining and enforcing property rights to water and in managing it with markets. In this paper, I examine these issues in the semi-arid U.S. West where many of the intensifying demand and supply problems regarding fresh water are playing out. I...

Katharine Coman’s “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation,” published in March 1911 in the first issue of the American Economic Review addressed issues of water supply, rights, and organization. These same issues have relevance today 100 years later in face of growing concern about the...

Katharine Coman's "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation," published in March 1911 in the first issue of the <em>American Economic Review</em>, addressed issues of water supply, rights, and organization. These same issues have relevance today, in the face of growing concern about the availability of...

<DIV><P>While debates over the consequences of climate change are often pessimistic, historical data from the past two centuries indicate many viable opportunities for responding to potential changes. This volume takes a close look at the ways in which economies—particularly that of the United...</p></div>

<DIV>The call to "reinvent government"—to reform the government bureaucracy of the United States—resonates as loudly from elected officials as from the public. Examining the political and economic forces that have shaped the American civil service system from its beginnings in 1883 through today,...</div>