Nepal is rich in water resources with a dense network of glaciers, lakes, rivers, and springs that originate in the Himalayas. However, only an estimated 15 billion cubic meters (BCM) of the 225 BCM water available annually is utilized for economic and social purposes. Several elements have...

Nepal is rich in water resources with a dense network of glaciers, lakes, rivers, and springs that originate in the Himalayas. However, only an estimated 15 billion cubic meters (BCM) of the 225 BCM water available annually is utilized for economic and social purposes. Several elements have...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based cost norms are widely used to regulate natural monopolies like water, electricity, and gas networks. In the typical application, demand is considered fixed and non-controllable (non-discretionary), and the challenge is to incentivize the monopoly to provide...

The firms’ performance assessment for regulation requires estimating profit change and its drivers. This study estimates and decomposes profit changes into components such as output and input price changes, output growth, and markups. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we compute the...

The sustainable development goal for water and sanitation - to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all is a lofty one. Worldwide, 2.4 billion people remain without access to improved sanitation, and nearly 0.7 billion remain without access to improved...

The increasing water shortages in cross-border river basins in Central Asia warrant taking measures to modernise and expand water sector infrastructure and enhance the efficiency of water use and water saving in various industries. These will require heavy long-term investment and, accordingly,...

During the past several decades, many countries have achieved significant progress on environmental issues such as water pollution through the increased stringency of their water policies. While a few studies have examined the stringency of overall environmental policy and its impacts on...

Moisture transport as well as evaporation and condensation are key mechanisms in the energy management of many processes occurring in different porous media. The role of moisture varies significantly among several applications such as food drying, concrete heating, deep geological barriers, and...

The water-energy-food nexus in the agricultural management of the Tarim River Basin (TRB) is an important index that reflects agricultural input productivity. This study uses the crop water requirement, energy equivalent, and agricultural water-energy-food nexus index model to comprehensive...

We estimate the impacts of two interventions implemented as field experiments in informal settlements by Nairobi’s water and sanitation utility to improve revenue collection efficiency and last mile connection loan repayment: (i) face-to-face engagement between utility staff and customers to...

Water is of central importance for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. With predictions of dire global water scarcity, attention is turning to resources that are considered to be unconventional, and hence called Unconventional Water Resources (UWRs). These...

Low electricity prices put economic pressure on hydropower companies. A more flexible water fee design can counteract this pressure and support hydropower companies during times when market revenues are low. However, this comes at the cost of lower revenues for resource owners. Using a sample of...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based cost norms have attractive properties in the regulation of natural monopolies. However, they are also sensitive to the choice of cost drivers. When some of the cost drivers are discretionary, this may lead to suboptimal incentives. When a regulated firm...

Tariffs are essential but not the only pathway to cost recovery, addressing affordability, and managing water conservation. To maximize their potential, they must be well designed, complemented by appropriate instruments, adequately regulated, and understood by customers. This report builds upon...

Transport infrastructure is one of the key elements in achieving a balanced growth within an economy. The water transport sector, in particular, plays a much larger role in an archipelagic country such as the Philippines. The country however, has underinvested in public infrastructure for...

How does financialization of the economy impact public governance of natural resources? One way includes a shift in how savings and cash accumulation are understood and practiced within public agencies. This article proffers that in the second half of the twentieth century, it became a...

Tariffs are essential but not the only pathway to cost recovery, addressing affordability, and managing water conservation. To maximize their potential, they must be well designed, complemented by appropriate instruments, adequately regulated, and understood by customers. This report builds upon...

The Pennichuck Corporation, located in New Hampshire, U.S., provides a unique opportunity to explore the rare structural transition from investor-ownership to a government-shareholder model for a long-standing regional water utility. In early 2012, concluding a ten-year dispute, the City of...

The water cycle including its oceans, surface water, wetlands, water vapor, clouds and groundwater has resulted in a patchwork of statutes and regulations that fail to address true protection of water resources. This is not a simple "fix" and requires Congressional positivism rather than decades...

The design of effective market institutions for allocation of water among competing uses remains an economic challenge both at a theoretical and practical level. The public good characteristic of instream flows adds another layer of externality which complicates transfers between consumptive and...

This paper compares water and sanitation services in municipalities that entered into a concession arrangement with a private operator versus those in a comparable control group of municipalities that continued with a public operator, and we explore five variables of interest: (i) water coverage;...

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are examined from the Political Economy Analysis (PEA) perspective in Rwanda. Through a participatory qualitative approach, the findings show that water and sanitation services have been relatively low on the political agenda in Rwanda. There is a...