The chapter reviews the generation and adoption of new technologies in the agricultural sector. The first section describes models of induced innovation and experimentation, considers the political economy of public investments in agricultural research, and addresses institutions and public policies for managing innovation activity. The second section reviews the economics of technology adoption in agriculture. Threshold models, diffusion models, and the influence of risk, uncertainty, and dynamic factors on adoption are considered. The section also describes the influence of institutions and government interventions on adoption. The third section outlines future research and policy challenges.

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Chapter 4 The agricultural innovation process: Research and technology adoption in a changing agricultural sector

Pricing irrigation water: a review of theory and practice

Preface 1. Natural resources and developing countries: an overview 2. Natural resource-based economic development in history 3. Does natural resource dependence hinder economic development? 4. Frontier expansion and economic development 5. Explaining land use change in developing countries 6. The economics of land conversion 7. Does water availability constrain economic development? 8. Rural poverty and resource degradation 9. Can frontier-based development be successful? 10. Policies for sustainable resource-based development in poor economies.

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Natural Resources and Economic Development

[1] A watershed can be simulated as a multiagent system (MAS) composed of spatially distributed land and water users (agents) within a common defined environment. The watershed system is characterized by distributed decision processes at the agent level with a coordination mechanism organizing the interactions among individual decision processes at the system level. This paper presents a decentralized (distributed) optimization method known as constraint-based reasoning, which allows individual agents in an MAS to optimize their behaviors over various alternatives. The method incorporates the optimization of all agents' objectives through an interaction scheme, in which the ith agent optimizes its objective with a selected priority for collaboration and forwards the solution and consequences to all agents that interact with it. Agents are allowed to determine how important their own objectives are in comparison with the constraints, using a local interest factor (βi). A large βi value indicates a selfish agent who puts high priority on its own benefit and ignores collaboration requirements. This bottom-up problem-solving approach mimics real-world watershed management problems better than conventional “top-down” optimization methods in which it is assumed that individual agents will completely comply with any recommendations that the coordinator makes. The method is applied to a steady state hypothetical watershed with three off-stream human agents, one in-stream human agent (reservoir), and two ecological agents.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2008WR007634

A decentralized optimization algorithm for multiagent system-based watershed management

Municipal water supply and sewage treatment utilities in Ontario, Canada, are studied in order to establish their costs of supply and evaluate their pricing practices. Prices charged to residential and commercial customers are found to be only one-third and one-sixth of the estimated marginal cost for water supply and sewage treatment, respectively. For example, the average price to residential customers is $0.32m[superscript 3], while the estimated marginal cost is $0.87/m[superscript 3]. The estimated cost parameters are combined with estimated residential and nonresidential demands functions in order to calculate approximate welfare losses that arise from overconsumption.

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Municipal Water Supply and Sewage Treatment: Costs, Prices, and Distortions

1. Introduction and Overview D.D. Parker, Y. Tsur. Part I: Regional Water Constraints: Middle East, California, Florida, and Australia. 2. The Israel Water Economy: An Overview D. Yaron. 3. The Jordan River Basin: Beyond National Concerns J. Kindler. 4. Water Resources in Turkey: Availability, Use, and Management E.H. Cakmak. 5. California's Water Resources and Institutions D.D. Parker. 6. Decentralized Water Allocation in Florida W.G. Boggess. 7. Australia's Water Situation: Resource Allocation and Management in a Maturing System J.J. Pigram. Part II: Economic Modeling of Decentralized Water Management Policies. A: Political Economy of Water Allocation. 8. The Political Economy of Domestic Water Allocation: The Cases of Israel and Jordan R.E. Just, et al. 9. Transboundary Water Agreements and Development Assistance G.B. Frisvold, M.F. Caswell. 10. Informational Imperfections in Water Resource Systems and the Political Economy of Water Supply and Pricing in Israel P. Zusman. 11. The Strategic Interdependence of a Shared Water Aquifer: A General Equilibrium Analysis T. Roe, Xinshen Diao. B: Water Institutions: Transition to Markets and Other Decentralized Allocation Mechanisms. 12. Designing Institutions for Water Management J. Roumasset. 13. Employing Market Mechanisms to Encourage Efficient Use of Water in the Middle East N. Becker, et al. 14. Efficient Management of Water in Agriculture D. Zilberman, et al. 15. Deriving Short-Run, Multistage Demand Curves and Simulating Market Prices for Reservoir Water Under Weather Uncertainty N. Dudley, B. Scott. 16. Water Institutions, Incentives, and Markets K.W. Easter, G. Feder. C: Incorporating Uncertainty in Resource Management Models. 17. On Event Uncertainty and Renewable Resource Management Y. Tsur, A. Zemel. 18. Quantifying Tradeoffs Between In-Stream and Off-Stream Uses Under Weather Uncertainty N. Dudley, B. Scott. 19. An Ex Ante Approach to Modeling Investment in New Technology A.P. Thurow, et al. 20. The Economics of Conjunctive Ground and Surface Water Irrigation Systems: Basic Principles and Empirical Evidence from Southern California Y. Tsur. Part III: Case Studies. 21. Peace and Prospects for International Water Projects in the Jordan-Yarmouk River Basin R.E. Just, et al. 22. Modeling the Impacts of Reducing Agricultural Water Supplies: Lessons from California's Bay/Delta Problem D. Sunding, et al. 23. Water and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century: The Middle East and California P.H. Gleick. 24. Decentralized Mechanisms and Institutions for Managing Water Resources: Reflections on Experiences from Australia W. Musgrave. Index.

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Douglas D. Parker

Papers

Decentralization and coordination of water resource management