Carlos M. Gómez

Land, environmental externalities and tourism development

In a two sectors dynamic model we analyze the process of tourism development based on the accumulation of capital (building of tourism facilities) and the reallocation of land from traditional activities to the tourism sector. The model incorporates the conflict between occupation of the territory by the tourism facilities, other productive activities and availability of cultural, natural and environmental assets that are valued by residents and visitors. We characterize the process of tourism development in two settings: the socially optimal solution and a situation where the costs of tourism expansion are external to the decision makers, where externalities on residents as well as intraindustry externalities are considered. Regarding the optimal solution, we show that it is optimal to limit tourism expansion before it reaches its maximum capacity even in a context where the economic attractiveness of tourism relative to other productive sectors rise continuously. However, in this context and when all the costs of tourism development are externalities the only limit to tourism quantitative expansion is its maximum capacity determined by the availability of land. Finally, we show that excessive environmental degradation from the future generations’ point of view is not a problem of discounting the future but rather a problem of externalities that affects negatively the current and future generations.

The TALC hypothesis and economic growth theory.

The authors build a bridge between traditional analysis of the evolution of tourism destinations and economic growth theory. With this aim, they develop an environmental growth model for an economy specializing in tourism and derive the pattern of tourism development with numerical calculations. The results do not contradict the pattern of evolution implied in the tourism area life cycle hypothesis, with environmental deterioration and public goods congestion being the main reasons for the stagnation of the tourism destination. The authors also show the importance of the quality of private tourism services in the evolution of a tourism destination.

Simple Myths and Basic Maths about Greening Irrigation

Greening the economy is mostly about improving water governance and not only about putting the existing resource saving technical alternatives into practice. Focusing on the second and forgetting the first risks finishing with a highly efficient use of water services at the level of each individual user but with an unsustainable amount of water use for the entire economy. This might be happening already in many places with the modernization of irrigated agriculture, the world’s largest water user and the one offering the most promising water saving opportunities. In spite of high expectations, modern irrigation techniques seem not to be contributing to reduce water scarcity and increase drought resiliency. In fact, according to the little evidence available, in some areas they are resulting in higher water use. Building on basic economic principles this study aims to show the conditions under which this apparently paradoxical outcome, known as the Jevons’ Paradox, might appear. This basic model is expected to serve as guidance for assessing the actual outcomes of increasing irrigation efficiency and to discuss the changes in water governance that would be required for this to make a real contribution to sustainable water management.

Quality standards versus taxation in a dynamic environmental model of a tourism economy

The increasing economic importance of tourism activity stimulates research on the more adequate instruments to reach tourism policy targets. This paper concentrates on two tourism policy areas, namely the influence on the pattern of tourism specialization and the correction of environmental externalities, and two policy tools, that is, a tourism tax and an accommodation quality standard. Using a dynamic general equilibrium model for an economy specialized in tourism, we show that both instruments are effective in reaching those targets, although they differ in efficiency terms. The quality standard policy regime yields a more efficient tax system, as it makes Ricardian rents bear a higher share of the tax burden, but the quality standard is in itself distortionary and can create incentives for capital over-accumulation. Looking at the steady state, the quality standard allows for higher long run welfare than the tourism tax, provided that the former does not cause any dynamic inefficiency. More generally, the paper shows that a general equilibrium perspective can unveil possible unexpected complementarities between environmental and other policy targets and instruments as, in this case, quality standards aimed to influence the pattern of tourism specialization.

An Analysis of the Evolution of Tourism Destinations from the Point of View of the Economic Growth Theory

In this paper we try to build a bridge between the traditional analysis of the evolution of tourism destinations and economic growth theory. With such an aim we develop an environmental growth model for an economy specialized in tourism and we derive the pattern of tourism development with numerical calculations. The results of our simulations do not contradict the general pattern of evolution implied in the Tourism Area Life Cycle Hypothesis, being environmental deterioration and public goods congestion the main reasons for the stagnation of the tourism destination. We also show the importance of the quality of private tourism services in the evolution of the tourism destination.

Revealing the Willingness to Pay for Income Insurance in Agriculture

A stable agricultural income is often regarded as a way to achieve a better environmental performance in this sector. However, conventional income stabilization tools have been showing recently signs of exhaustion. Under this critical juncture, EU institutions have encouraged the expansion of agricultural insurance. With different degrees of public support, insurance systems against several risks have been successfully developed across the EU and have adopted increasingly comprehensive forms. Eventually, EU institutions have started to assess the development of a comprehensive income insurance framework. Income insurance covers a wider variety of risks and has higher costs than conventional single risk or combined insurance. This demands an in depth knowledge of farmers’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for this product. The following pages present a methodology that calculates the WTP for different degrees of income protection using a Revealed Preferences Model and the Certainty Equivalent theory. The methodology is applied in a drought prone area in southeastern Spain. Results show that WTP for income insurance in this area is higher than observed insurance premiums. This may play in favor of the development of sustainable income insurance systems, though additional evidence is required.

Water Trading in the Tagus River Basin (Spain)

Population and economic growth, coupled with rapid and extensive urban development, pushed to the limit the capacity of the upper and middle stretches of the Tagus River Basin to meet an increasing water demand, within the range of available resources and current water regulation infrastructures. In this context, voluntary agreements to transfer water use rights from agriculture to urban uses gained social support and political acceptance as an alternative to cope with the recurrent water supply deficit during dry periods. This was mainly because of their lower cost as compared to the best available alternatives already in place (efficiency improvements, use of strategic reserves, additional water works). Since the early 1990s pioneer voluntary agreements to formally transfer water between water utilities and irrigation districts sprung up for the first time in Spain. This chapter assesses two trades in the Madrid Region (including the capital city, Madrid’s metropolitan area and other towns). These trades can be arguably considered as ‘embryonic’ examples of formal water use right trades in Spain.

An Integrated Risk Assessment Model for the Implementation of Drought Insurance Markets in Spain

Water is a key input in the production of many goods and services and under certain conditions can become a critical limiting factor with significant impacts on regional development. This is the case of many agricultural European Mediterranean basins, where water deficit during drought events is partially covered by illegal abstractions, mostly from aquifers, which are tolerated by the authorities. Groundwater overexploitation for irrigation has created in these areas an unprecedented environmental catastrophe that threatens ecosystems sustainability, urban water supply and the current model of development. Market-based drought insurance systems have the potential to introduce the necessary incentives to reduce overexploitation during drought events and remove the high costs of the drought indemnity paid by the government. This paper develops a methodology to obtain the optimum risk premium based on concatenated stochastic models. The methodology is applied to the agricultural district of Campo de Cartagena (Segura River Basin, Spain). Results show that the prices in a hypothetic competitive private drought insurance market would be reasonable and the expected environmental outcomes significant.

Water Pricing and Taxes: An Introduction

Water pricing embraces a range of distinct policy instruments that affect the scale and/or the pattern of production and resource-exploitation costs. Ideally, water prices should reflect financial costs of service delivering water infrastructure, environmental costs arising from harm induced to ecosystems and ecosystem services, and resource costs attendant to social welfare losses from not using the water for the most socially beneficial purpose. What is straightforward and unchallenged in economic theory may not translate into clear and uncontested principles to be followed in practice. The information asymmetries, pre-existing water permits or entitlements adhering to different legal doctrines, and hostile reception of water policy reform may antagonise introduction of pricing policy instruments. This chapter provides an overview of the empirical studies from different European countries, supplemented by studies from California and Israel, comprised in the first book section. Although the collection is not meant to be exhaustive or thorough, it offers insightful overview of design principles and choices made to put in place a variety of instruments designed to cope with water pollution, water stress, and hydrological and morphological modifications of water bodies. The majority of the chapters in this section addresses residential and industrial water supply provision and wastewater discharge. The remaining chapters examine the application of EPIs in agriculture, for cost recovery of irrigation services and pollution control; and in hydroelectricity generation, for curbing the environmental impact of water impoundments. The common structure of all showcased studies is a result of meticulous efforts to highlight the scope of the analysed instruments, the embedding legislative and regulatory environment, and the evidence collected so as to substantiate the performance assessment.

Defining and Assessing Economic Policy Instruments for Sustainable Water Management

This first chapter sets the scene for the work presented in this book. Based on a review of the literature, the chapter introduces a definition of economic policy instruments (EPIs) and a classification of broad categories of EPIs relevant for water policy that will be used to present the following parts of the book (prices, trading and other instruments) and following chapters/case studies under each part. A literature review is presented to justify the relevance on the selection of the three broad categories of instruments selected. Further, this chapter introduces the state of the art in the application of water EPIs and their ex-post evaluation, which is followed by the presentation of the criteria that is used for the evaluation of economic policy instruments that has been applied to all the case studies in the book. In this context, criteria are grouped into three outcome criteria and three process criteria. Outcome-oriented criteria describe how the EPIs perform. They include intended and unintended economic and environmental outcomes and the distribution of benefits and costs among the affected parties. These steps consider the application of cost effectiveness and cost benefits analysis for example to assess ex-post performance of the EPI. Process criteria describe the institutional conditions (legislative, political, cultural, etc.) affecting the formation and operation of the studied EPI (particularly relevant if we are assessing the possible impacts from the use of economic instruments), the transaction costs from implementing and enforcing the instruments and the process of implementation.