A review of residential water conservation tool performance and influences on implementation effectiveness.

There has been sparse coverage of advances in the application of Demand-Side Management (DSM) in the academic press in recent years. At the same time a number of important DSM studies have been reported on by non-academic institutions, and there is therefore a need for a comprehensive, up to date review of the impacts of DSM tools and the factors which influence their effectiveness. This paper aims to begin to address this apparent lack of coverage with a review of residential DSM tools using recent reports of DSM campaigns in the western (developed) world collected from a range of sources. The aims are, to understand the potential for residential DSM tools to save water in different types of household under varying conditions and, identify influences on implementation effectiveness. The current review will be of interest to, among others, water company professionals, policy makers, regulators and environmental agencies

Feasibility of Seasonal Water Pricing Considering Metering Costs

Efficiency implications of seasonal pricing, uniform pricing, and optimal seasonal pricing with metering costs are analyzed qualitatively using classical optimization technique. The first two schemes are special cases of the last pricing scheme. A nonlinear‐integer programming model is formulated for a case study application to Salt Lake City to examine the feasibility of seasonal pricing. The analysis indicates that uniform pricing is preferable unless metering costs are substantially lower than present levels

Immediate Disclosure or Secrecy? The Release of Information in Experimental Asset Markets

This paper reports the results of experimental asset markets designed to investigate how the public disclosure of uncertain information affects market and individual outcomes. In some markets, no information is released as trading starts, and in others, an imperfect pre-announcement is disclosed. The reliability of the pre-announcement varies across markets. Our data indicate under-reaction to a pre-announcement that is highly reliable and over-reaction to one with much lower reliability. Price volatility is higher and allocational efficiency is lower with a pre-announcement that reflects substantial uncertainty. Furthermore, when the reliability of the pre-announcement is low, traders extract a smaller proportion of the total attainable profit. Thus, in a highly uncertain environment better outcomes may result when information is withheld. These results have important policy implications regarding the disclosure of information by the Federal Reserve. In a highly uncertain environment, better outcomes may actually result with less information