Economics & Development

Examines the role of institutional regulation, mobile technologies and behavioural change in water access and allocation. Research projects investigate economic instruments to manage water scarcity, water supply and public health. Researchers analyse how governance regimes operate at different spatial and temporal scales to promote or inhibit improved human development outcomes.

Some current projects

Economic instruments to manage water security risks and tradeoffs

2012
A research partnership with the OECD Water Security and Climate Change Adaptation initiatives to investigate the role of economic instruments in managing water-related risks and tradeoffs.

Mobile/water for development: mobile payments

2011-2013
Mobile water payments offer a secure, low-cost and inclusive mechanism to improve the sustainability of water supply services. This project investigates the impacts and implications of mobile water payments across urban Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Mobile/water for development: smart handpumps

2010-2015
This project works with the Government of Zambia and UNICEF to examine how a new technology developed by Oxford University that automatically texts information on handpump use can improve reliable access to water services for the rural poor. It aims to understand how the availability of objective and reliable information on handpump performance can accelerate and maintain improved water services.

Mobile/water for development: smart rivers

2010-2014
This project is designing a Smart River System in the Burguret River sub-catchment, Kenya, to automatically measure abstraction on daily time-steps to determine current water use patterns, to enable new allocation systems and to protect environmental flow allocations.

Transforming water scarcity through trading

2011-2015
This project uses a Market Simulator approach to model the impacts of water trading in the UK and study the economic benefits, environmental consequences, opportunities for novel water resource development, and opportunities to obtain payments for ecosystem benefits.

Market-based water reform in a transactions costs world

2011-2014
This project applies transaction costs economics to evaluate the effectiveness of market-based water policy experiments in Australia and the Western US with a focus at the intersection of water rights reforms, water markets, and river basin governance institutions.

People

  • Dr Chris Decker
  • Julián López-Murcia
  • Katy Hansen
  • Tim Foster
  • Professor David Thomas
  • Tamara Etmannski
  • Alex Money
  • Aaron Krolikowski
  • Alexandra Girard
  • Alvar Closas
  • Haiyan Yu
  • Professor David Bradley
  • Michael J Rouse CBE
  • Shauna Monkman
  • Dr Laura Rival
  • Professor Andrew Wilson
  • Dr Dustin Garrick
  • Patrick Thomson
  • Dr Sabina Alkire
  • Dr Robert Hope
  • Maria Mancilla-Garcia
  • Dr David Johnstone
  • Professor David Grey
  • Dr Christine McCulloch
  • Dr Anna Russell
  • Dr Harry Verhoeven
  • Huijuan Wu