From Decentralized to Centralized Irrigation Management

Steven Smith

No 2017-09, Working Papers from Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business

Abstract: Surface water irrigators in arid regions confront public good issues for building and maintaining shared infrastructure as well as common-pool resource issues to appropriate the surface water. Drawing on the unique history of New Mexico, I explore how the transition in the early 20 th century from the original small decentralized communal Spanish irrigation systems (acequias) to centralized quasi-public irrigation districts altered agricultural development and production. My results confirm that that irrigation districts can significantly improve outcomes when investing in costly infrastructure to expand irrigated acreage, increasing farmland values up to 33 percent. However, I find no broader evidence that the centralized control of water distribution provides any gains to acreage previously under irrigation by the decentralized acequias.

Keywords: common-pool resources; transaction costs; externalities; governance structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N52 O13 Q15 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-his
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http://econbus-papers.mines.edu/working-papers/wp201709.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: From decentralized to centralized irrigation management (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mns:wpaper:wp201709

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