Resistance to the Regulation of Common Resources in Rural Tunisia

Liu, Ying, Mare Sarr and Timothy Swanson . 2014. “Resistance to the Regulation of Common Resources in Rural Tunisia.” EfD Discussion Paper Series EfD DP 14-17.
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We examine the effect of the introduction of uniform water-charging for aquifer management and provide evidence using a survey-based choice experiment of agricultural water users in rural Tunisia. Theoretically, we show that the implementation of the proposed second-best regulation would result both in efficiency gains and in distributional effects in favour of small landholders. Empirically, we find that resistance to the introduction of an effective water-charging regime is greatest amongst the largest landholders. Resistance to the regulation of common resources may be rooted in the manner in which heterogeneity might determine the distributional impact of different management regimes.

Authors

• Other authors:
  Liu, Ying
  Sarr, Mare
  Swanson , Timothy