The Residential Water Demand Effect of Increasing Block Rate Water Budgets

Kenneth A. Baerenklau, Kurt Schwabe () and Ariel Dinar

Land Economics, 2014, vol. 90, issue 4, 683-699

Abstract: We investigate the effect of introducing a fiscally neutral increasing block rate water budget price structure on residential water demand. We estimate that demand was reduced by around 17%, although the reduction was achieved gradually over more than three years. As intermediate steps we derive estimates of price and income elasticities that rely only on longitudinal variability. We investigate how different subpopulations responded to the pricing change and find evidence that marginal, rather than average, prices may be driving consumption. We also derive alternative rate structures that might have been implemented, and assess their estimated demand effects.

JEL-codes: Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://le.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/90/4/683
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:landec:v:90:y:2014:i:4:p:683-699

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Land Economics from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().