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A Note on Contradictions in Australian Water Policy
Author(s) -
Crase Lin,
Pawsey Nicholas,
O'Keefe Sue
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
economic papers: a journal of applied economics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1759-3441
pISSN - 0812-0439
DOI - 10.1111/1759-3441.12037
Subject(s) - contradiction , context (archaeology) , government (linguistics) , point (geometry) , economics , irrigation , natural resource economics , business , public economics , geography , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , epistemology , biology
The success of Australia's water markets is now well documented and confirms the hypothesised usefulness of water markets as a policy tool, at least in the context of places like the Murray–Darling Basin. In this article, we reflect on the theoretical benefits of water markets as a point of reference against which to scrutinise the current penchant of government to subsidise irrigation infrastructure in efforts to address over‐allocation. We conclude that this approach results in a serious contradiction, unless there are grounds for believing that government has insights into the dynamic efficiency of the irrigation industry that exceed the coordination power of the market.