Governing scarcity. Water markets, equity and efficiency in pre-1950s eastern Spain

Garrido, Samuel

doi:10.18352/bmgn-lchr.274

Cited by 3 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Although the engineers were fully aware of this fact, they did not give it much importance. But it was important because when small surface areas were ensured regular access to water, more wealth was generated per unit of resource than when the water was used to irrigate large extensions in a scant and uncertain way (Garrido ). Precisely for this reason, the Spanish irrigation communities usually adopted very conservative criteria when it came to establishing the acreage with a right to be irrigated.…”

Section: Water Dutymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bearing in mind that water markets have existed in very few places around the world at any time, the little (or no) attention that many of the foreign reporters paid to the approximately 35 Spanish huertas in which one was working at the end of the nineteenth century (Garrido ) is surprising. Since intense debates about irrigation pricing were taking place in India (Stone , 159–94), it is also surprising that that lack of interest was especially pronounced in the case of the British reporters – with the exception of the engineer Schonnemann, who travelled to Spain with the sole intention of studying the water market in Lorca.…”

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…). While there is no evidence to show that any water market appeared thanks to an agreement backed by most of the irrigators, there is evidence that some water markets developed against the will of most irrigators (Garrido ). In those cases, it all usually began when the largest owners of land with a right to be irrigated sold water illegally; they then managed to stop water being tied to the land and to have a legal market set up, both for the water and for the water rights.…”

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There, cereals were widespread simply because there was no way to replace them with crops that were more demanding in terms of the amount and frequency of irrigation. For that precise reason, in the mid‐twentieth century around 90 per cent of the irrigated land in Lorca was still dedicated to growing cereals (Garrido ).…”

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See López Gómez (), Gil (), Barciela et al. () and Garrido (, ). The vision of the Spanish water markets that reached Ostrom (, 78–82), however, was the optimistic one offered by Maass and Anderson (, 100–45).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water Management, Spanish Irrigation Communities and Colonial Engineers

Garrido

2013

Journal of Agrarian Change

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In the nineteenth century, Spanish irrigation was studied by a number of British and French engineers, who sought to acquire knowledge that could be applied to India and Algeria. In their reports, they said that Spanish irrigation communities were run by the irrigators themselves in a totally democratic way, which was not true. Although such ideas had hardly any practical consequences in colonial India and Algeria, they did have important repercussions in Spain, where the irrigation institutions came to resemble the image they had been given by the reporters, with the best results. Through the work of Elinor Ostrom, the myth created by the nineteenth‐century reporters has also eventually become an argument in favour of irrigation projects in today's developing countries being managed by water users’ associations.

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Section: Water Dutymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Water Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water Management, Spanish Irrigation Communities and Colonial Engineers

Garrido

2013

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Ampliación del regadío, regulación institucional y sostenibilidad en las huertas tradicionales de la España mediterránea

Garrido¹

2012

Investigaciones de Historia Económica

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Registro de acceso restringido Este recurso no está disponible en acceso abierto por política de la editorial. No obstante, se puede acceder al texto completo desde la Universitat Jaume I o si el usuario cuenta con suscripción. Registre d'accés restringit Aquest recurs no està disponible en accés obert per política de l'editorial. No obstant això, es pot accedir al text complet des de la Universitat Jaume I o si l'usuari compta amb subscripció. Restricted access item This item isn't open access because of publisher's policy. The full--text version is only available from Jaume I University or if the user has a running suscription to the publisher's contents.

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Institutional Inertia: Persistent Inefficient Institutions in Spain

Espín-Sánchez¹

2017

J. Econ. Hist.

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In 1966, after more than 700 years, the irrigation community in Mula (Spain) switched from auctions to quotas to allocate water from its river. This change happened in the absence of either political or technological change. Quotas develop a model in which poor farmers cannot credibly commit to purchase water rights. I show that empirical evidence on savings and prices is consistent with this interpretation. A temporary increase in output prices in the 1950s and commitment problem.dangerous to carry through, than to initiate a new order of things."Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince T he literature on institutional persistence has grown in recent years. This is not a new topic (North 1990;Alston, Eggertsson, and North 1996), but it was not until recently that an extensive set of empirical papers on the topic emerged. These new empirical papers focus on particular historical episodes and regions of the world, including India (Jha 2013), South America (Dell 2010), and Europe (Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2008; Voigtländer and Voth 2012) among other areas. These papers document institutional persistence and present robust empirical results, but lack a formal mechanism that explains the persistence. Persistent Inef cient Institutions in Spain 693In this article I provide a general framework to explain institutional persistence and institutional change. While I test the model through a particular empirical application, the model can be applied more generally. Traditional explanations for institutional persistence require technological or political change to spark institutional change. This article provides an alternative mechanism, called Institutional Inertia, which explains institutional change in the absence of political change or changes in technology or relative prices. In addition to providing an explicit mechanism for Institutional Inertia, this article also advances the notion of a transitional institution: a temporary institution whose sole purpose is to implement the change from the old institution to the new one.I applied this model of institutional change to a particular historical case. In 1242 the Christian kingdom of Castile and the Muslim kingdom of Murcia signed a treaty stating that Murcia would become a protectorate of Castile. The treaty established that Castile would have political control over Murcia, but Muslims living there would keep their assets, their customs, and their lives. The Muslim governors of the cities of Mula and Lorca rejected the agreement. The Christian army then conquered both cities by force and expropriated the water property rights. In both towns, the conquerors then created a shareholder-owned corporation to hold the water property rights. The corporations in each town ran periodic auctions to sell water usage rights and paid dividends to the owners at the end of the year. All the other towns and cities in the region kept their pre-Reconquista system, in which land and water rights were linked to their land holdings.cient and observed neighbors in most surrounding towns alloc...

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Governing scarcity. Water markets, equity and efficiency in pre-1950s eastern Spain

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Water Management, Spanish Irrigation Communities and Colonial Engineers

Water Management, Spanish Irrigation Communities and Colonial Engineers

Ampliación del regadío, regulación institucional y sostenibilidad en las huertas tradicionales de la España mediterránea

Institutional Inertia: Persistent Inefficient Institutions in Spain

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