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Optimal Water Metering and Pricing

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  • Andrés Chambouleyron

Abstract

Marginal cost pricing of running water and sewerage services haslong been the default recommendation of economists and natural resource specialists to firms and local governments. However, optimal water rate calculation considering the optimal number ofmeters has not been thoroughly treated in the literature. The socially optimal number of meters crucially depends on the price of water charged by the Water Company. This is because whether or not metering is justified in economic terms will depend on the decline in water consumption and therefore in water production costs. This paper combines the optimal pricing and theoptimal metering issues in one optimization problem. Both in a centralized and in a decentralized way, the optimal number of meters is determined simultaneously with the optimal per unit water rate. The Rateable Value System (RV) (i.e. the ‘Status Quo’ or benchmark regime) is confronted with Universal Metering (UM),Optimal Metering (OM) and Decentralized Metering (DM) in terms of optimal water rates and the socially optimal number of meters.Except for RV, the results of (UM), (OM) and (DM) all suggest that price should be set equal to marginal cost and that the optimal number of meters will be determined by a functional form combining water, metering costs and water demand characteristics. Conclusions and policy recommendations are drawn from the theoretical analysis. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Suggested Citation

  • Andrés Chambouleyron, 2004. "Optimal Water Metering and Pricing," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 18(4), pages 305-319, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:18:y:2004:i:4:p:305-319
    DOI: 10.1023/B:WARM.0000048470.25647.16
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Steven Renzetti, 1999. "Municipal Water Supply and Sewage Treatment: Costs, Prices and Distortions," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 32(3), pages 688-704, May.
    2. Andrés Chambouleyron, 2003. "An Incentive Mechanism for Decentralized Water Metering Decisions," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 17(2), pages 89-111, April.
    3. Steve H. Hanke & Roland W. Wentworth, 1981. "On the Marginal Cost of Wastewater Services," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 558-567.
    4. Andrés Chambouleyron, 2002. "An Incentive Mechanism for Decentralized Water Metering Decisions," Industrial Organization 0206001, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Nov 2002.
    5. Ralph Turvey, 1976. "Analyzing the Marginal Cost of Water Supply," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(2), pages 158-168.
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    Cited by:

    1. Abdoulkarim Esmaeili & Solmaz Vazirzadeh, 2009. "Water Pricing for Agricultural Production in the South of Iran," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(5), pages 957-964, March.
    2. R. Quentin Grafton, 2017. "Responding to the ‘Wicked Problem’ of Water Insecurity," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(10), pages 3023-3041, August.

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