IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20120006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model

Author

Listed:
  • Gerard van der Laan

    (VU University Amsterdam)

  • Nigel Moes

    (VU University Amsterdam)

Abstract

In this paper we study international river pollution problems. We introduce a model in which the agents (countries) located along a river derive benefit while causing pollution, but also incur environmental costs of experiencing pollution from all upstream agents. We find that total pollution in the model decreases when the agents decide to cooperate. The resulting gain in social welfare can be distributed among the agents based on the property rights over the river. Using principles from international water law we suggest 'fair' ways of distributing the property rights and therefore the cooperative gain.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerard van der Laan & Nigel Moes, 2012. "Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-006/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20120006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/12006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wang, Yuntong, 2011. "Trading water along a river," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 124-130, March.
    2. P. Herings & Gerard Laan & Dolf Talman, 2007. "Socially Structured Games," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 1-29, February.
    3. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & van der Laan, Gerard & Talman, Dolf, 2007. "The socially stable core in structured transferable utility games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 85-104, April.
    4. Fernandez, Linda, 2009. "Wastewater pollution abatement across an international border," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 67-88, February.
    5. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2012. "Sequential sharing rules for river sharing problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 187-210, February.
    6. Anna Khmelnitskaya, 2010. "Values for rooted-tree and sink-tree digraph games and sharing a river," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(4), pages 657-669, October.
    7. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    8. Parrachino, Irene & Dinar, Ariel & Patrone, Fioravante, 2006. "Cooperative game theory and its application to natural, environmental, and water resource issues : 3. application to water resources," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4074, The World Bank.
    9. Gabrielle Demange, 2004. "On Group Stability in Hierarchies and Networks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 754-778, August.
    10. van den Brink, René & van der Laan, Gerard & Moes, Nigel, 2012. "Fair agreements for sharing international rivers with multiple springs and externalities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 388-403.
    11. Herings, P. Jean Jacques & van der Laan, Gerard & Talman, Dolf, 2008. "The average tree solution for cycle-free graph games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 77-92, January.
    12. Sigman, Hilary, 2005. "Transboundary spillovers and decentralization of environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 82-101, July.
    13. René Brink & Gerard Laan & Valeri Vasil’ev, 2007. "Component efficient solutions in line-graph games with applications," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(2), pages 349-364, November.
    14. Hilary Sigman, 2002. "International Spillovers and Water Quality in Rivers: Do Countries Free Ride?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1152-1159, September.
    15. Fernandez, Linda, 2002. "Solving water pollution problems along the US–Mexico border," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 715-732, October.
    16. Rene van den Brink & Arantza Estevez-Fernandez & Gerard van der Laan & Nigel Moes, 2011. "Independence Axioms for Water Allocation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-128/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Kilgour, D. Marc & Dinar, Ariel, 1995. "Are stable agreements for sharing international river waters now possible?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1474, The World Bank.
    18. D. Kilgour & Ariel Dinar, 2001. "Flexible Water Sharing within an International River Basin," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(1), pages 43-60, January.
    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. Jorge Alcalde-Unzu & Maria Gomez-Rua & Elena Molis, 2018. "Allocating the costs of cleaning a river; estimating responsibilities versus incentive compatibility," ThE Papers 18/02, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    3. Jorge Alcalde-Unzu & María Gómez-Rúa & Elena Molis, 2021. "Allocating the costs of cleaning a river: expected responsibility versus median responsibility," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(1), pages 185-214, March.
    4. He, Jie & Huang, Anping & Xu, Luodan, 2015. "Spatial heterogeneity and transboundary pollution: A contingent valuation (CV) study on the Xijiang River drainage basin in south China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 101-130.
    5. Alcalde-Unzu, Jorge & Gómez-Rúa, María & Molis, Elena, 2015. "Sharing the costs of cleaning a river: the Upstream Responsibility rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 134-150.

    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. László Á. Kóczy, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, December.
    2. van den Brink, René & van der Laan, Gerard & Moes, Nigel, 2012. "Fair agreements for sharing international rivers with multiple springs and externalities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 388-403.
    3. Gudmundsson, Jens & Hougaard, Jens Leth & Ko, Chiu Yu, 2019. "Decentralized mechanisms for river sharing," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 67-81.
    4. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2015. "Composition properties in the river claims problem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(4), pages 807-831, April.
    5. van den Brink, René & He, Simin & Huang, Jia-Ping, 2018. "Polluted river problems and games with a permission structure," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 182-205.
    6. Sylvain Béal & Amandine Ghintran & Eric Rémila & Philippe Solal, 2015. "The sequential equal surplus division for rooted forest games and an application to sharing a river with bifurcations," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(2), pages 251-283, September.
    7. Ambec, Stefan & Dinar, Ariel & McKinney, Daene, 2013. "Water sharing agreements sustainable to reduced flows," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 639-655.
    8. Dongshuang Hou & Aymeric Lardon & Panfei Sun & Genjiu Xu, 2019. "Sharing a Polluted River under Waste Flow Control," GREDEG Working Papers 2019-23, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    9. René Brink & Arantza Estévez-Fernández & Gerard Laan & Nigel Moes, 2014. "Independence of downstream and upstream benefits in river water allocation problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 173-194, June.
    10. Béal, Sylvain & Rémila, Eric & Solal, Philippe, 2012. "The sequential equal surplus division for sharing a river," MPRA Paper 37346, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Erik Ansink & Harold Houba, 2014. "The Economics of Transboundary River Management," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-132/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Sylvain Béal & Amandine Ghintran & Eric Rémila & Philippe Solal, 2012. "The Sequential Equal Surplus Division for Sharing International Rivers with Bifurcations," Working Papers 2012-02, CRESE.
    13. Sarina Steinmann & Ralph Winkler, 2019. "Sharing a River with Downstream Externalities," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-15, May.
    14. Hurt, Wesley & Osório, António (António Miguel), 2014. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," Working Papers 2072/237596, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    15. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2012. "Sequential sharing rules for river sharing problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 187-210, February.
    16. Osorio, Antonio, 2014. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," MPRA Paper 56690, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. René van den Brink & Simin He & Jia-Ping Huang, 2015. "Polluted River Problems and Games with a Permission Structure," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-108/II, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Rene van den Brink & Arantza Estevez-Fernandez & Gerard van der Laan & Nigel Moes, 2011. "Independence Axioms for Water Allocation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-128/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    19. Jorge Alcalde-Unzu & María Gómez-Rúa & Elena Molis, 2021. "Allocating the costs of cleaning a river: expected responsibility versus median responsibility," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(1), pages 185-214, March.
    20. Richard Baron & Sylvain Béal & Eric Rémila & Philippe Solal, 2011. "Average tree solutions and the distribution of Harsanyi dividends," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 40(2), pages 331-349, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    international river; pollution; externality; property rights; value;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    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:20120006. 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.