Cooperative game theory and its application to natural, environmental, and water resource issues : 3. application to water resources

This paper reviews various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of water resources. With an increase in the competition over various water resources, the incidents of disputes have been in the center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of various water uses, such as multi-objective water projects, irrigation, groundwater, hydropower, urban water supply, wastewater, and transboundary water disputes. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce water resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. In particular, the various approaches for cost sharing and for allocation of physical water infrastructure and flow can serve as a basis for stable and efficient agreement, such that long-term investments in water projects are profitable and sustainable. The latter point is especially important, given recent developments in water policy in various countries and regional institutions such as the European Union (Water Framework Directive), calling for full cost recovery of investments and operation and maintenance in water projects. The CGT approaches discussed and demonstrated in this paper can provide a solid basis for finding possible and stable cost-sharing arrangements.Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water Supply and Systems,Water and Industry

Building Up and Improvement of the Institution of the Socialist Oriented Market Economy in Vietnam

The market oriented economic reform direction has been officially affirmed since the VI Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (1986) with the approval of the economic reform plan towards doi moi. This direction was then legalized in the Constitution (1992) and further developed in official documents of Communist Party Congresses and legal documents of the Government of Vietnam . In the past years, to specify this political direction, the Government and people of Vietnam have made endless efforts to establish a new economic institution system called the socialist oriented market economy.Vietnam, Transitional Economy, Socialist Oriented Market Economy

The Structural Crisis of Labor Flexibility

Paper evaluating the CCC’s aims, strategies, and activities. It includes an analysis of the persistence of poor working conditions in the garment industry; an overview of CCC strategies and the debate over codes of conduct, monitoring, and verification; and the description of three broad strategies for future action aimed at increasing the impact of voluntary, private instruments on working conditions

DO MISSING INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS BLOCK ENLARGEMENT OF WATER MARKETS?

As we consider the potential for expanding water markets as a means to help prevent water shortages, it is clear that there is resistance to such an expansion. This resistance should not be surprising given that there are likely to be both gainers and losers from expanded water markets. This papers shows that there are a number of potential market failures when water markets are expanded and that these failures are important to different stakeholder groups. These failures result from both technical and pecuniary externalities. If markets are to expand beyond the local level, new institutional arrangements will be needed that help reduce the negative impacts of the different market failures. In the past a number of institutional arrangements have been used by different stakeholder groups to block trading. We review some of these arrangements as well as institutional arrangements that can work to promote market expansion by mitigating market failures or by compensating damaged parties.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

On the Guifi.net community network economics

How costs are distributed among the participants is a key question in the management and viability of shared resources. Although all cost-sharing mechanisms are subjective and thus it is eventually up to the participants to accept one or another, some general criteria seem desirable, such as being budget-balanced and that, in any case, a participant pays more when not cooperating with anyone else. In this paper, we analyse the cost-sharing mechanism that the Guifi.net community network has developed and put in practice to split the transit costs among their more than 20 participants for almost a decade. Our results show that the Guifi.net’s cost-sharing mechanism of the external connectivity, which comprises an equal membership fee for each participant plus a proportional distribution of the remaining costs according to the resource consumption, yields a cost assignment similar to the Shapley value. Our analysis also shows that any alternative to the coalition of all participants entails significant total cost increases and detrimental widespread cost allocation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Efficient Coordinated Power Distribution on Private Infrastructure

Current power distribution network design makes it attractive for agents to generate their own power (distributed generation) and to construct private infrastructure (e.g., distribution lines) to exchange power without using the main public grid. We show that such private transactions may increase overall network load because of increased transmission distances, thus increasing resistive losses. We present a coordination scheme for the centralized control of private infrastructure that satisfies participation constraints and budget balance. Experiments show that our scheme reduces distribution losses by 4-5 % when there are only a constant number of private lines and by 55%-60 % when the number of private lines is proportional to the number of agents