Quiggin and Chambers have introduced the notion of invariant preferences, and shown that the only invariant expected-utility functionals are those associated with a quadratic utility function. This note identifies the class of preferences which simultaneously satisfy invariance, two-fund...

In this chapter, we compare the experience of Australia and New Zealand over the period of microeconomic reform that began in the early 1980s. Of particular concern is the question of how New Zealand, with what were seen at the time as the ‘best’ set of economic policies in the OECD,...

Australia is the world's driest continent and the intensity of conflict over water and water management has been increasing , especially in rural areas. By focussing on the recent federalist compact, National Wa ter Initiative (NWI), we explore the use of market and property rights instruments...

In this paper we experiment with an original format of a Choice Modelling questionnaire developed to capture preferences from respondents with different property right frame of references. The format includes both WTP and WTA choice alternatives for native vegetation management. It is well...

High population pressure and the rapid pace of human activity including urbanization, industrialization and other economic activities have led to a dwindling supply of arable land per capita and a process of agricultural intensification in South Asia. While this process has significantly...

The Murray-Darling Basin comprises over 1 million km2; it lies within four states and one territory; and over 12, 800 GL of irrigation water is used to produce over 40% of the nation's gross value of agricultural production. This production is used by a diverse collection of some-times mutually...

In this paper, we represent 'meet the competition' guarantees as the endogenous outcome of a non-cooperative game. We model the phenomenon by assuming that firms compete in supply schedules in a two-stage process. We assume that the choice of a negatively sloped supply schedule is costly. In...

For much of the 20th century, the expansion of irrigated agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin, was treated as a self-evidently desirable objective, to be pursued without excessive regard to questions of economic costs and benefits. Irrigation seemed to offer a ‘droughtproofing’ solution...

It is likely that climate change will be associated with reductions in inflows of water to the Murray–Darling Basin In this paper, we analyse the effects of climate change in the Murray–Darling Basin, using a simulation model that incorporates a state-contingent representation of...

In a stochastic decision environment, differences in information can lead rational decision makers facing the same stochastic technology and the same markets to make different production choices. Efficiency and productivity measurement in such a setting can be seriously and systematically biased...