Economics, The Economy and Water
NM WRRI’s 63rd Annual New Mexico Water Conference
At the Tipping Point: Water Scarcity, Science, and Policy
October 17, 2018 Jim Peach jpeach@ nmsu.edu
Economics, The Economy and Water NM WRRIs 63rd Annual New Mexico - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Economics, The Economy and Water NM WRRIs 63rd Annual New Mexico Water Conference At the Tipping Point: Water Scarcity, Science, and Policy October 17, 2018 Jim Peach jpeach@ nmsu.edu Its the economy stupid-- or is it? Elephant Butte
Economics, The Economy and Water
NM WRRI’s 63rd Annual New Mexico Water Conference
At the Tipping Point: Water Scarcity, Science, and Policy
October 17, 2018 Jim Peach jpeach@ nmsu.edu
It’s the economy stupid-- or is it?
Elephant Butte at 3.1% 10/14.2018
https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/elephant-butte
The National Economy
The New Mexico Economy: better but …
4.7
4.5
3.0
NM population growth reflects the state of the economy
Photo by Jim Peach, June 2018
Water Shortage
Shortage: Quantity demanded > Quantity supplied
Price of water Quantity of water demanded
Demand Curve Supply Curve
Elasticities
Elasticities measure how responsive one variable is to a change in another variable. Price elasticity measures the responsiveness of quantity demanded to a change in price. Income elasticity measures the responsiveness of quantity to a change in income.
Price Elasticity
Price Elasticity
Baseball Card Example: The price of a card increases from 10c to 11c and the quantity of cards demanded decreases from 1,000 to 750.
5 . 2 10 . / ) 11 . 10 . ( 1000 / ) 750 1000 ( − = − − = ε
Price Elasticity
Price Elasticity and Total Revenue
Price Increase Price Decrease 0 <= Ed = -1 (inelastic) TR Increases TR decreases Ed = -1 (Unitary) No Change No Change Ed < -1 (Elastic) TR Decreases TR Increases
The relationship between price elasticity and total revenue
Note that the elasticity changes along the demand curve Slope and elasticity are not the same
A perfectly inelastic demand Curve
Price Quantity TR=PxQ
Some water demand price elasicities
Place Year Elasticity Source Phoenix 2016
Fullerton (2016) Albuquerque 2012 1998
Chermak et al (2012) Gegax and McGuckin (1998) El Paso 1994- 2013
Fullerton Las Cruces 1980-95 1998
McGuckin et al Gegax and McGuckin 1998 Tucson 2001 to 2011
Clarke, Colby, Thompson (2017)
http://www.abcwua.org/education/consumers.html http://www.abcwua.org/education/pdfs/WaterUseGraph.pdf
Responsiveness to price changes
Various types of efficiency
Technical efficiency and economic efficiency
given level of production. Think of this in physical terms. If you are technically efficient, you can’t produce the same level of output with less of one input without increasing some other input.
Allocative efficiency and Pareto efficiency
producing another unit of output is equal to the marginal social costs
good without making at least one person worse off. It is possible to have Pareto efficiency without allocative efficiency.
Some takeaways