IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20100054.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market Power in Water Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Ansink

    (IVM, VU University Amsterdam, and Wageningen University)

  • Harold Houba

    (VU University Amsterdam)

Abstract

This discussion paper led to a publication in 'Journal of Environmental Economics and Management' . Water markets with market power are analysed as multi-market Cournot competition in which the river structure constrains access to local markets and limited resources impose capacity constraints. Conditions for uniqueness are identified. Lerner indices are larger under binding resource constraints. The number of cases explodes in the number of local markets. Under quadratic benefit functions and symmetric constant marginal extraction costs, closed-form solutions for selected cases are derived, and numerical implementation through a single optimization program is available. Upstream locations face less competition than downstream. Observed price patterns in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District are consistent with the theoretical results.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Ansink & Harold Houba, 2010. "Market Power in Water Markets," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-054/1, Tinbergen Institute, revised 16 May 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20100054
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/10054.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jaskold Gabszewicz, Jean & Vial, Jean-Philippe, 1972. "Oligopoly "A la cournot" in a general equilibrium analysis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 381-400, June.
    2. Ambec, Stefan & Ehlers, Lars, 2008. "Sharing a river among satiable agents," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 35-50, September.
    3. Ambec, Stefan & Sprumont, Yves, 2002. "Sharing a River," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 453-462, December.
    4. Mark Armstrong & Steffen Huck, 2011. "Behavioral Economics as Applied to Firms: A Primer," Antitrust Chronicle, Competition Policy International, vol. 1.
    5. Brennan, Donna C., 2006. "Water policy reform in Australia: lessons from the Victorian seasonal water market," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 50(3), pages 1-21, September.
    6. Youn Kim, H. & Clark, Robert M., 1988. "Economies of scale and scope in water supply," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 479-502, November.
    7. Weber, Marian L., 2001. "Markets for Water Rights under Environmental Constraints," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 53-64, July.
    8. Ralph Turvey, 1976. "Analyzing the Marginal Cost of Water Supply," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(2), pages 158-168.
    9. Hanan G. Jacoby & Rinku Murgai & Saeed Ur Rehman, 2004. "Monopoly Power and Distribution in Fragmented Markets: The Case of Groundwater," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 783-808.
    10. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    11. Ronald C. Griffin, 2006. "Water Resource Economics: The Analysis of Scarcity, Policies, and Projects," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026207267x, April.
    12. Easter, K William & Rosegrant, Mark W & Dinar, Ariel, 1999. "Formal and Informal Markets for Water: Institutions, Performance, and Constraints," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(1), pages 99-116, February.
    13. Stephen Holland, 2006. "Privatization of Water-Resource Development," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 34(2), pages 291-315, June.
    14. Dixit, Avinash, 1984. "International Trade Policy for Oligopolistic Industries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376a), pages 1-16, Supplemen.
    15. Donna Brennan, 2006. "Water policy reform in Australia: lessons from the Victorian seasonal water market ," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 50(3), pages 403-423, September.
    16. Bjornlund, Henning & McKay, Jennifer, 2002. "Aspects of water markets for developing countries: experiences from Australia, Chile, and the US," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 769-795, October.
    17. Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Hochman, Eithan & Umetsu, Chieko & Zilberman, David, 2009. "Water allocation under distribution losses: Comparing alternative institutions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 463-476, February.
    18. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    19. Bulow, Jeremy I & Geanakoplos, John D & Klemperer, Paul D, 1985. "Multimarket Oligopoly: Strategic Substitutes and Complements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 488-511, June.
    20. Sheila M. Olmstead, 2010. "The Economics of Managing Scarce Water Resources," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(2), pages 179-198, Summer.
    21. F. H. Hahn, 1962. "The Stability of the Cournot Oligopoly Solution," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 29(4), pages 329-331.
    22. Rosegrant, Mark W. & Binswanger, Hans P., 1994. "Markets in tradable water rights: Potential for efficiency gains in developing country water resource allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(11), pages 1613-1625, November.
    23. R. Maria Saleth & John B. Braden & J. Wayland Eheart, 1991. "Bargaining Rules for a Thin Spot Water Market," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 67(3), pages 326-339.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Houba, Harold & van der Laan, Gerard & Zeng, Yuyu, 2014. "Asymmetric Nash Solutions in the River Sharing Problem," Strategic Behavior and the Environment, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 321-360, December.
    2. Harold Houba & Françeska Tomori, 2023. "Stackelberg Social Equilibrium in Water Markets," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-9, July.
    3. Ricardo Martinez & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, 2024. "Fair allocation of riparian water rights," Papers 2407.14623, arXiv.org.
    4. Michler, Jeffrey D. & Wu, Steven Y., 2020. "Governance and contract choice: Theory and evidence from groundwater irrigation markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 129-147.
    5. Françeska Tomori & Erik Ansink & Harold Houba & Nick Hagerty & Charles Bos, 2024. "Market power in California's water market," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 106(3), pages 1274-1299, May.
    6. Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold, 2016. "Sustainable agreements on stochastic river flow," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 92-117.
    7. Aneel Karnani & Brent McFerran & Anirban Mukhopadhyay, 2016. "The Obesity Crisis as Market Failure: An Analysis of Systemic Causes and Corrective Mechanisms," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(3), pages 445-470.
    8. Elham Erfanian & Alan R. Collins, 2017. "Charges for Water and Access: What Explains the Differences in West Virginia Municipalities?," Working Papers Working Paper 2017-02, Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University.
    9. Erik Ansink & Harold Houba, 2014. "The Economics of Transboundary River Management," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-132/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Elham Erfanian & Alan R. Collins, 2018. "Charges for Water and Access: What Explains the Differences Among West Virginian Municipalities?," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(04), pages 1-27, October.
    11. Athanasios Tsiarapas & Zisis Mallios, 2023. "Estimating the long-term impact of market power on the welfare gains from groundwater markets," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 25(3), pages 377-406, July.
    12. Fabien Martinez, 2015. "A Three-Dimensional Conceptual Framework of Corporate Water Responsibility," Post-Print hal-02887624, HAL.
    13. Tomori, Françeska & Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold & Hagerty, Nick & Bos, Charles, 2021. "Market power in California’s water market," Working Papers 2072/534854, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    14. Jingjing Wang & Xiaoyang Wang, 2023. "Why is water illiquid?: The NQH2O water index futures," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(1), pages 602-621, March.
    15. Ellen M. Bruno & Richard J. Sexton, 2020. "The Gains from Agricultural Groundwater Trade and the Potential for Market Power: Theory and Application," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 884-910, May.
    16. Bruno, Ellen M. & Sexton, Richard J., 2017. "The Impacts of Market Power in Agricultural Groundwater Markets," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258434, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    17. Adriana V. Madzharov & Suresh Ramanathan & Lauren G. Block, 2016. "The Halo Effect of Product Color Lightness on Hedonic Food Consumption," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 579-591.
    18. Abraham, Anand & Ramachandran, Parthasarathy, 2021. "The welfare implications of transboundary storage and dam ownership on river water trade," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 18-27.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Françeska Tomori & Erik Ansink & Harold Houba & Nick Hagerty & Charles Bos, 2024. "Market power in California's water market," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 106(3), pages 1274-1299, May.
    2. Yi Liu & Peng Li & Zhiwei Zhang, 2018. "Resilient or Not: A Comparative Case Study of Ten Local Water Markets in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-16, November.
    3. Tomori, Françeska & Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold & Hagerty, Nick & Bos, Charles, 2021. "Market power in California’s water market," Working Papers 2072/534854, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    4. Kristiana Hansen & Jonathan Kaplan & Stephan Kroll, 2014. "Valuing Options in Water Markets: A Laboratory Investigation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 57(1), pages 59-80, January.
    5. Sheila M. Olmstead, 2010. "The Economics of Managing Scarce Water Resources," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(2), pages 179-198, Summer.
    6. Anne Sibert, 1992. "Exchange Rates, Market Structure, Prices and Imports," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 68(3), pages 233-239, September.
    7. Francis Carlo Petterini, 2018. "The Likelihood Of A Water Market In Brazil," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 190, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    8. Conconi, P., 2000. "Trade Bloc Formation Under Imperfect Competition," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 571, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    9. repec:cte:wsrepe:9968 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ereney Hadjigeorgalis, 2009. "A Place for Water Markets: Performance and Challenges," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(1), pages 50-67.
    11. Sarah Ann Wheeler, 2022. "Debunking Murray‐Darling Basin water trade myths," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 66(4), pages 797-821, October.
    12. Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Yimin, 1996. "Stability of a Cournot-Nash equilibrium: The multiproduct case," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 441-462.
    13. Delorit, Justin D. & Parker, Dominic P. & Block, Paul J., 2019. "An agro-economic approach to framing perennial farm-scale water resources demand management for water rights markets," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 68-81.
    14. Colacicco, Rudy, 2012. "Strategic Trade Policy in General Oligopolistic Equilibrium," MPRA Paper 38118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Dermot Leahy & Catia Montagna, 1998. "Targeted Strategic Trade Policy with Domestic Cost Heterogeneity," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 100, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    16. Guangyao Wang & Xinyue Zhang & Lijuan Du & Bo Lei & Zhenghe Xu, 2023. "Study on the Optimal Allocation of Water Resources Based on the Perspective of Water Rights Trading," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-19, November.
    17. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    18. Wang, Yuntong, 2011. "Trading water along a river," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 124-130, March.
    19. Olmstead, Sheila M., 2014. "Climate change adaptation and water resource management: A review of the literature," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 500-509.
    20. László Á. Kóczy, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, September.
    21. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2013:i:126 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Park, Chongkook, 1990. "Three essays on strategic trade policy: precommitment, time consistency, and effects of a ratio quota," ISU General Staff Papers 1990010108000010878, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Water markets; oligopoly; market power; Cournot-Walras equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:tin:wpaper:20100054. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    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.