Efficiency and Water Use: Dynamic Effects of Irrigation Technology Adoption
研究灌溉技术改进是否因反弹效应导致水资源开采增加（杰文斯悖论），发现采用合适估计方法后无显著证据支持该悖论，并揭示了灌溉者对新技术的适应过程。
As global aquifer levels continue to decline, clarifying the impact of irrigation efficiency improvements on water resources is critically important. This study uses two transitions in irrigation technology to investigate whether rebound effects cause such efficiency improvements to increase resource extraction, a phenomenon known as Jevons’s paradox. We demonstrate how staggered adoption of an irrigation technology and dynamic treatment effects cause two-way fixed effects (TWFE) to indicate the wrong sign for the effect on withdrawals. Using an estimator appropriate for these circumstances, we find no significant evidence of Jevons’s paradox. The dynamic effects we find explain this discrepancy and, perhaps more important, reveal irrigators’ process of adaptation to each new technology at the intensive and extensive margins.