Do Environmental Markets Improve on Open Access? Evidence from California Groundwater Rights
研究了地下水权市场相比开放获取的净收益，利用加州南部含水层的空间断点回归发现市场显著提升了土地价值和水位，对资源经济学家和政策制定者有参考价值。
Environmental markets are widely prescribed as an alternative to open access regimes for natural resources. We develop a model of dynamic groundwater extraction to demonstrate how a spatial regression discontinuity design that exploits a spatially incomplete market for groundwater rights recovers a lower bound on the market’s net benefit. We apply this estimator to a major aquifer in water-scarce southern California and find that a groundwater market generated substantial net benefits, as capitalized in land values. Heterogeneity analyses point to gains arising in part from rights trading, enabling more efficient water use across sectors. Additional findings suggest that the market increased groundwater levels.