Computing Alternating Offers and Water Prices in Bilateral River Basin Management

This contribution deals with the fundamental critique in Dinar et al. (1992, Theory and Decision 32) on the use of Game theory in water management: People are reluctant to monetary transfers unrelated to water prices and game theoretic solutions impose a computational burden. For the bilateral alternating-offers model, a single optimization program significantly reduces the computational burden. Furthermore, water prices and property rights result from exploiting the Second Welfare Theorem. Both issues are discussed and applied to a bilateral version of the theoretical river basin model in Ambec and Sprumont (2002). Directions for future research are provided.