The development of a market in groundwater usage rights can be inhibited by constraints arising from the institutional context. Such impediments may reduce the potential gains from trade and may generate high transaction costs for prospective traders. We analyse the regulations and policies...

Groundwater extraction can have varied and diffuse effects. Negative external effects may include costs imposed on other groundwater users and on surrounding ecosystems. Environmental damages are commonly not reflected in market transactions. Groundwater transfers have the potential to cause...

Perth, Western Australia (pop. 1.6m) derives 60% of its public water supply from the Gnangara groundwater system (GGS). Horticulture, domestic self-supply, and municipal parks are other major consumers of GGS groundwater. The system supports important wetlands and groundwater-dependent...

Hydrologists predict that salinity in the agricultural region of Western Australia will eventually affect an average of 30 percent of the landscape if nothing is done to reduce current levels of recharge. The scale of tree planting and other works thought to be required for controlling salinity...

Dryland salinity is one of the most prominent and intractable problems facing farm managers in the extensive non-irrigated farming systems of southern Australia. The issue was ignored by policy makers until late in the twentieth century, but is now the sole or partial subject of government...

This is a broad-ranging discussion of the role of economics and economists in the formation of government policies. The focus is on helping economists who wish to be influential in the policy process. The paper covers rationales for and against economist involvement in the policy process (market...