Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions

Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights...

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Main Authors:	Kremer, Michael, Leino, Jessica, Miguel, Edward, Zwane, Alix Peterson
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D120 Organizational Behavior Transaction Costs Property Rights D230 Health Production I120 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Renewable Resources and Conservation: Water Q250 Valuation of Environmental Effects Q510
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4646

id	okr-10986-4646
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-46462021-04-23T14:02:18Z Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions Kremer, Michael Leino, Jessica Miguel, Edward Zwane, Alix Peterson Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D120 Organizational Behavior Transaction Costs Property Rights D230 Health Production I120 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Renewable Resources and Conservation: Water Q250 Valuation of Environmental Effects Q510 Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements. 2012-03-30T07:29:01Z 2012-03-30T07:29:01Z 2011 Journal Article Quarterly Journal of Economics 00335533 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4646 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article Kenya
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D120 Organizational Behavior Transaction Costs Property Rights D230 Health Production I120 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Renewable Resources and Conservation: Water Q250 Valuation of Environmental Effects Q510
spellingShingle	Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D120 Organizational Behavior Transaction Costs Property Rights D230 Health Production I120 Economic Development: Agriculture Natural Resources Energy Environment Other Primary Products O130 Renewable Resources and Conservation: Water Q250 Valuation of Environmental Effects Q510 Kremer, Michael Leino, Jessica Miguel, Edward Zwane, Alix Peterson Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
geographic_facet	Kenya
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements.
format	Journal Article
author	Kremer, Michael Leino, Jessica Miguel, Edward Zwane, Alix Peterson
author_facet	Kremer, Michael Leino, Jessica Miguel, Edward Zwane, Alix Peterson
author_sort	Kremer, Michael
title	Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
title_short	Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
title_full	Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
title_fullStr	Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
title_full_unstemmed	Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
title_sort	spring cleaning: rural water impacts, valuation, and property rights institutions
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4646
_version_	1764392240730341376

Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions

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