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...

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...

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...

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...

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;...

We show that pollution increases the offering yields of municipal bonds, indicating increased risk. We establish this using a difference-in-differences design, comparing the bonds from U.S. counties revealed to contain per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in their drinking-water supplies...

A pandemic of COVID-19 is one of the most challenging situations in modern history in the world. Anti-epidemic measures have an important impact on the use of natural resources. Several studies described increasing water consumption in the households sector. In the study, the data about the...

In this paper, we studied the influence of contract renewals on water prices in France. When studying French water contracts in force between 2008 and 2018, we found that contract renewals have little influence on the prices paid by consumers. However, at contract renewal times, the share of the...

The construction of municipal water systems was a major event in the history of American cities -- bringing relief from disease, providing resources to combat fires, attracting business investment, and promoting development generally. Although the first large-scale municipal water system in the...

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...

We implement a mixed method approach that combines a randomized controlled trial and qualitative data collection to assess whether, and if so how, behavioural change can be sustained. We do so in the context of Pakistan’s national sanitation strategy to combat open defecation, Community-Led...

We estimate market power in California's thin water market. Market frictions may distort the potential welfare gains from water marketing. We use a Nash-Cournot model and derive a closed-form solution for the extent of market power in a typical water market setting. We then use this solution to...

This paper provides new evidence on the convergence process of energy, water and food per capita consumption levels for 108 countries from 1971 to 2018, using a common data set, with VAR and panel data approach. We establish a new notion of multivariate sigma and beta-convergence. The results...

The alarming rise in drinking water pollution across the U.S. is often attributed to cost cutting pressures faced by local officials. We know little, however, about why these pressures are so severe for some cities compared to others. We present a new theory to argue that an important...

When directives rather than contracts determine rights to water flows, agents will substitute away from securing water rights by contract toward securing them through political directives. When those directives are legitimated by court rulings, they alter the rules that govern social...

This study presents empirical evidence that a health improvement program---privatization of municipal water services---in Argentina during the 1990s has had a negative effect on long-term human capital accumulation. Exploiting variations across regions and cohorts, I find that early childhood...

This policy brief considers the potential role for economic regulation of water utilities in Michigan, particularly given considerable pressure on infrastructure costs and prices and subsequent concerns about efficiency and equity. Economic regulation by state public utility or public service...

China is using Tibetan waters as an instrument for strengthening supremacy in the disputed territories. The country is often accused of harming its downstream neighbours through its water management policies, such as the construction of dams for hydropower. Moreover, China has no water treaties...

Corporate water stewardship is conventionally internally focused, but now it is becoming a critical issue in a wider socio-political context. Drawing on the theory of self-regulation, we investigate the rationale behind, and the factors contributing to, corporate decisions to voluntarily...

The newly launched water futures market faces a serious illiquidity problem with scarce trading volume. We examine the causes of the illiquidity based on the futures contract design literature and empirical analysis of spot water markets in the western United States. The primary cause of...

The definitive federal census and repository for regulated water system data in the United States, universally used by researchers and policymakers, is the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). We consider the veracity of the data used to identify and differentiate water systems. This...

China has emerged as one of the world's most active markets for public-private partnerships (PPP) in the water sector, while the pace of such development globally has slowed in recent years. This article investigates the dynamics of the development of PPP projects in the Chinese water sector...

The purpose of the Resilient Water Infrastructure Design Brief is to guide users on how resilience can be built into the engineering design of their project. With a focus on the three natural hazards most likely to affect water and sanitation infrastructure (droughts, floods, and high winds from...

This study aims to identify potential hydropower sites and calculate the theoretical potential hydropower capacity based on watershed modelling of the Mindanao River Basin (MRB) in the Philippines for the sustainable development of a previously unstudied region. The Soil and Water Assessment...

In this paper, we exploit exogenous variation in navigability of the Rhine river to analyze the impact of weather-related supply shocks on economic activity in Germany. Our analysis shows that low water levels lead to transportation disruptions that cause a significant and economically...

Center pivot systems are widely used to overcome the irrigation needs of agricultural fields. In this paper, an autonomous approach is proposed in order to improve the low efficiency of irrigation by developing a system based on the water requirement of the plantations, through field data. The...

This chapter discusses infrastructure development in the Philippines under decentralization using illustrations mainly in the water sector. It opens up a study of the constraints and challenges in governance and regulation that local government units (LGUs) face in narrowing down the...