Sustainable Water Policies and the Optimal Development of Desalination Technologies

Yacov Tsur and Amos Zemel

No 232816, Working Papers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Center for Agricultural Economic Research

Abstract: In many arid and semi-arid regions whether or not to use desalinated water has long been a non-issue and policy debates are focused on the timing and extent of the desalination activities. We offer a model to analyze how water scarcity and demand structure, on the one hand, and cost reduction via R&D activities, on the other hand, affect the desirable development of desalination technologies and the optimal time profiles of fresh and desalinated water supplies. The optimal R&D policy is found to follow a Non-Standard Most Rapid Approach Path (NSMRAP): The state of desalination technology—the accumulated knowledge from R&D activities—should approach a prespecified target process as rapidly as possible and proceed along it forever. The NSMRAP property enables a complete characterization of a comprehensive water policy in terms of a simple and tractable set of rules.

Keywords: Crop; Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/232816/files/h ... rkingpapers-9902.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:huaewp:232816

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.232816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Center for Agricultural Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().