IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20140132.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economics of Transboundary River Management

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Ansink

    (VU University Amsterdam)

  • Harold Houba

    (VU University Amsterdam)

Abstract

We survey the economics of transboundary river water allocation, which emerged in the 1960s and has matured over the last decade due to increasing concerns over water scarcity and pollution. We outline the major approaches and pay specific attention to the strategic aspects of transboundary river water allocation. These strategic aspects are captured by employing game theory to assess the economics of transboundary river water allocation in a simple model of river sharing. This model allows us to show how conflict and cooperation over transboundary water resources may occur. It also allows us to pay specific attention to the efficiency, sustainability, and fairness of solutions to this model. We compare and contrast both cooperative and non-cooperative approaches and we relate their solutions to illustrative examples.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Ansink & Harold Houba, 2014. "The Economics of Transboundary River Management," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-132/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/14132.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wang, Yuntong, 2011. "Trading water along a river," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 124-130, March.
    2. Ansink, Erik & Gengenbach, Michael & Weikard, Hans-Peter, 2012. "River Sharing and Water Trade," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 122860, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    3. Jesús Gastélum & Juan Valdés & Steven Stewart, 2009. "A Decision Support System to Improve Water Resources Management in the Conchos Basin," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(8), pages 1519-1548, June.
    4. Houba, Harold & van der Laan, Gerard & Zeng, Yuyu, 2014. "Asymmetric Nash Solutions in the River Sharing Problem," Strategic Behavior and the Environment, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 321-360, December.
    5. Houba, Harold & Pham Do, Kim Hang & Zhu, Xueqin, 2013. "Saving a river: a joint management approach to the Mekong River Basin," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 93-109, February.
    6. Sylvain Béal & Amandine Ghintran & Eric Rémila & Philippe Solal, 2012. "The Sequential Equal Surplus Division for Sharing International Rivers with Bifurcations," Working Papers 2012-02, CRESE.
    7. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2012. "Sequential sharing rules for river sharing problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 187-210, February.
    8. Santiago Rubio & Begoña Casino, 2003. "Strategic Behavior and Efficiency in the Common Property Extraction of Groundwater," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 26(1), pages 73-87, September.
    9. P. C. D. Milly & K. A. Dunne & A. V. Vecchia, 2005. "Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate," Nature, Nature, vol. 438(7066), pages 347-350, November.
    10. Anna Khmelnitskaya, 2010. "Values for rooted-tree and sink-tree digraph games and sharing a river," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(4), pages 657-669, October.
    11. Hervé Moulin, 2000. "Priority Rules and Other Asymmetric Rationing Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(3), pages 643-684, May.
    12. Ansink, Erik & Weikard, Hans-Peter, 2009. "Contested water rights," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 247-260, June.
    13. Wang, Lizhong & Fang, Liping & Hipel, Keith W., 2008. "Basin-wide cooperative water resources allocation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 190(3), pages 798-817, November.
    14. Erik Ansink & Arjan Ruijs, 2008. "Climate Change and the Stability of Water Allocation Agreements," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 41(2), pages 249-266, October.
    15. Harold Houba, 2008. "Computing Alternating Offers And Water Prices In Bilateral River Basin Management," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(03), pages 257-278.
    16. Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold, 2016. "Sustainable agreements on stochastic river flow," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 92-117.
    17. Adams, Gregory & Rausser, Gordon & Simon, Leo, 1996. "Modelling multilateral negotiations: An application to California water policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 97-111, July.
    18. Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold, 2012. "Market power in water markets," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 237-252.
    19. Carey, Janis & Sunding, David L. & Zilberman, David, 2002. "Transaction costs and trading behavior in an immature water market," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 733-750, October.
    20. René Brink & Arantza Estévez-Fernández & Gerard Laan & Nigel Moes, 2014. "Independence of downstream and upstream benefits in river water allocation problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 173-194, June.
    21. van den Brink, René & van der Laan, Gerard & Moes, Nigel, 2012. "Fair agreements for sharing international rivers with multiple springs and externalities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 388-403.
    22. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2015. "Composition properties in the river claims problem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(4), pages 807-831, April.
    23. Sylvain Beal & Amandine Ghintran & Eric Remila & Philippe Solal, 2013. "The River Sharing Problem: A Survey," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(03), pages 1-19.
    24. Lucia De Stefano & James Duncan & Shlomi Dinar & Kerstin Stahl & Kenneth M Strzepek & Aaron T Wolf, 2012. "Climate change and the institutional resilience of international river basins," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 49(1), pages 193-209, January.
    25. Thomson, William, 2003. "Axiomatic and game-theoretic analysis of bankruptcy and taxation problems: a survey," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 249-297, July.
    26. Ambec, Stefan & Dinar, Ariel & McKinney, Daene, 2013. "Water sharing agreements sustainable to reduced flows," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 639-655.
    27. Bhaduri, Anik & Barbier, Edward B., 2008. "International water transfer and sharing: the case of the Ganges River," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 29-51, February.
    28. Kilgour, D. Marc & Dinar, Ariel, 1995. "Are stable agreements for sharing international river waters now possible?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1474, The World Bank.
    29. Lynne Lewis Bennett & Charles W. Howe & James Shope, 2000. "The Interstate River Compact as a Water Allocation Mechanism: Efficiency Aspects," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(4), pages 1006-1015.
    30. Carraro, Carlo & Marchiori, Carmen & Sgobbi, Alessandra, 2007. "Negotiating on water: insights from non-cooperative bargaining theory," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 329-349, April.
    31. Béal, Sylvain & Rémila, Eric & Solal, Philippe, 2012. "The sequential equal surplus division for sharing a river," MPRA Paper 37346, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    32. D. Kilgour & Ariel Dinar, 2001. "Flexible Water Sharing within an International River Basin," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(1), pages 43-60, January.
    33. Rosegrant, Mark W. & Binswanger, Hans P., 1994. "Markets in tradable water rights: Potential for efficiency gains in developing country water resource allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(11), pages 1613-1625, November.
    34. Holden, Paul & Thobani, Mateen, 1996. "Tradable water rights : a property rights approach to resolving water shortages and promoting investment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1627, The World Bank.
    35. William Thomson, 2001. "On the axiomatic method and its recent applications to game theory and resource allocation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 18(2), pages 327-386.
    36. Ines Dombrowsky, 2007. "Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12751.
    37. Bjornlund, Henning & McKay, Jennifer, 2002. "Aspects of water markets for developing countries: experiences from Australia, Chile, and the US," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 769-795, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dagmawi Mulugeta Degefu & Weijun He & Liang Yuan & An Min & Qi Zhang, 2018. "Bankruptcy to Surplus: Sharing Transboundary River Basin’s Water under Scarcity," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(8), pages 2735-2751, June.
    2. Li, Zhi & Zhang, Xin & Xu, Wenchao, 2018. "Water Transactions along a River: A Multilateral Bargaining Experiment with a Veto Player," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274048, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Lea Melnikovová, 2017. "Can Game Theory Help to Mitigate Water Conflicts in the Syrdarya Basin?," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 1393-1401.
    4. Dagmawi Mulugeta Degefu & Weijun He & Liang Yuan, 2017. "Monotonic Bargaining Solution for Allocating Critically Scarce Transboundary Water," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(9), pages 2627-2644, July.
    5. Gudmundsson, Jens & Hougaard, Jens Leth & Ko, Chiu Yu, 2019. "Decentralized mechanisms for river sharing," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 67-81.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2015. "Composition properties in the river claims problem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(4), pages 807-831, April.
    2. Ansink, Erik & Houba, Harold, 2016. "Sustainable agreements on stochastic river flow," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 92-117.
    3. Gudmundsson, Jens & Hougaard, Jens Leth & Ko, Chiu Yu, 2019. "Decentralized mechanisms for river sharing," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 67-81.
    4. Ansink, Erik & Gengenbach, Michael & Weikard, Hans-Peter, 2012. "River Sharing and Water Trade," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 122860, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    5. Lea Melnikovová, 2017. "Can Game Theory Help to Mitigate Water Conflicts in the Syrdarya Basin?," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 1393-1401.
    6. Osorio, Antonio, 2014. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," MPRA Paper 56690, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Hurt, Wesley & Osório, António (António Miguel), 2014. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," Working Papers 2072/237596, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    8. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2016. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," Working Papers 2072/266574, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    9. Erik Ansink & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2012. "Sequential sharing rules for river sharing problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 187-210, February.
    10. Abraham, Anand & Ramachandran, Parthasarathy, 2021. "The welfare implications of transboundary storage and dam ownership on river water trade," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 18-27.
    11. António Osório, 2017. "A Sequential Allocation Problem: The Asymptotic Distribution of Resources," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 357-377, March.
    12. Rene van den Brink & Saish Nevrekar, 2020. "Peaceful Agreements to Share a River," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-016/II, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Gerard van der Laan & Nigel Moes, 2012. "Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-006/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Ambec, Stefan & Dinar, Ariel & McKinney, Daene, 2013. "Water sharing agreements sustainable to reduced flows," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 639-655.
    15. Erik Ansink, 2009. "Self-enforcing Agreements on Water allocation," Working Papers 2009.73, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    16. Yuzhi Yang & Erik Ansink & Jens Gudmundsson, 2023. "How to Pollute a River If You Must," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-036/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. van den Brink, René & He, Simin & Huang, Jia-Ping, 2018. "Polluted river problems and games with a permission structure," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 182-205.
    18. Rémy Delille & Jean-Christophe Pereau, 2014. "The Seawall Bargaining Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-13, June.
    19. Jens Gudmundsson & Jens Leth Hougaard, 2021. "River pollution abatement: Decentralized solutions and smart contracts," IFRO Working Paper 2021/07, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics, revised Oct 2021.
    20. René van den Brink & Simin He & Jia-Ping Huang, 2015. "Polluted River Problems and Games with a Permission Structure," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-108/II, Tinbergen Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    River sharing problem; River claims problem; Fairness; Efficiency; Sustainability; Water allocation agreement; Bargaining; Water trade; Sharing rules; Axiomatic approach;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.