An Empirical Perspective on Water Pricing Reforms.

There is a growing effort to view water resource allocation from a perspective which incorporates consumers' preferences along with the supply constraints into management plans. This paper examines the structure of water users' preferences, the structure of the cost of supply and the appropriate form for prices. The second motivation for paper stems from the observation that reforms are the result of public policy decisions. As a result, the paper examines some of the empirical features of the political environment in which water pricing decisions are made.