Water Economics and Politics Seminar Series
/ Urban water management

Pricing and individual choice in urban water conservation

Speaker: Distinguished Prof. Emeritus Gary Libecap | University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), United States

Moderator: Prof. Djiby Thiam | Director: WPE – Water and Production Economics, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa

Time: 16:00 South African Standard Time (SAST) | GMT +2

Topic: I discuss two topics: urban water pricing and rural-to-urban water transfers. For the first, I point out that demand management via tiered pricing is used far less than (likely more costly) supply augmentation, where costs and spread uniformly across all consumers. Bureaucratic and political incentives drive this inequitable and likely less efficient management approach. In the second, I describe the price differential between urban and rural water and the efficiency gains from reallocation. Source rural community resistance could be mitigated with an extraction tax similar to what is used in other natural resources.

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UCT-UCR Seminar Series - Gary Libecap

About the speaker: Gary D. Libecap, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and Economics Department at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara, emeritus and National Bureau of Economic Research. Gary Libecap has long worked on the development and impact of property rights institutions, particularly for natural resources: oil and gas, timber, rangeland, minerals, water, and fisheries. He has authored or coauthored 14 books and over 100 peer reviewed articles and chapters; awarded the Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022; was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University 2010–2011; and Erskine Professor, University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2019. More on garylibecap.com.

Seminar format:

  • Live online session on Microsoft Teams
  • Duration: 1 hour
  • Live presentation with Q&A session

Who should attend: This series is open to students and faculty from academic institutions across South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, policymakers, engineering and technical professionals, advocacy groups, NGO staff, and anyone with a keen interest in water economics and policy.

The UCT-UCR Seminar Series

This seminar is part of the UCT-UCR Seminar Series: Water Economics and Politics, a collaboration between the University of Cape Town (UCT) and University of California, Riverside (UCR). Subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates on upcoming sessions.

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