IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-717045.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rationing the Commons

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Ryan
  • Anant Sudarshan

Abstract

Common resources may be managed with inefficient policies for the sake of equity. We study how rationing the commons shapes the efficiency and equity of resource use in the context of agricultural groundwater use in Rajasthan, India. We find that rationing binds on input use, such that farmers, despite trivial prices for water extraction, use roughly the socially optimal amount of water on average. The rationing regime is still grossly inefficient, because it misallocates water across farmers, lowering productivity. Pigouvian reform would increase agricultural surplus by 12% of household income yet fall well short of a Pareto improvement over rationing.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Ryan & Anant Sudarshan, 2022. "Rationing the Commons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(1), pages 210-257.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/717045
    DOI: 10.1086/717045
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/717045
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/717045
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/717045?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ujjayant Chakravorty & Ridhima Gupta & Martino Pelli, 2022. "The economics of rural energy use in developing countries," CIRANO Working Papers 2022s-12, CIRANO.
    2. Fishman, Ram & Giné, Xavier & Jacoby, Hanan G., 2023. "Efficient irrigation and water conservation: Evidence from South India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    3. Marek Hudik, 2024. "Externality as a coordination problem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 201(3), pages 495-510, December.
    4. Eynde, Oliver Vanden & Wren-Lewis, Liam, 2024. "Complementarities in Infrastructure: Evidence from Indian Agriculture," SocArXiv ejb8x, Center for Open Science.
    5. Soumya Balasubramanya & Nicholas Brozović & Ram Fishman & Sharachchandra Lele & Jinxia Wang, 2022. "Managing irrigation under increasing water scarcity," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(6), pages 976-984, November.
    6. D'Odorico, Paolo & Dell'Angelo, Jampel & Cristina Rulli, Maria, 2024. "Appropriation pathways of water grabbing," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/717045. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.