Can Allocation-Based Water Rates Promote Conservation and Increase Welfare? A California Case Study

An allocation-based rate (ABR) is a special type of increasing block rate (IBR) price structure that is receiving increased attention from urban water suppliers in places like California where population growth and climate change continue to increase water scarcity. Previous work by Baerenklau et al. [Baerenklau, KA, KA Schwabe and A Dinar (2014a). Allocation-based water pricing promotes conservation while keeping user costs low. Agricultural and Resource Economics Update, 17(6), 1–14; Baerenklau, KA, KA Schwabe and A Dinar (2014b). The residential water demand effect of increasing block rate water budgets. Land Economics, 90(4), 683–699.] investigates the conservation potential of ABR and finds that consumption under ABR was 10–15% below that of a comparable uniform rate structure for a southern California case study. This paper extends that work by using the discrete–continuous choice framework to estimate household-level welfare effects of ABR for the same dataset. We find that despite the observed decrease in consumption, average household welfare actually increased under ABR due to its non-linear structure. We also find that similar results would have been achievable with a simpler standard IBR structure. While either of these block rate structures is welfare-preferred to uniform price and quantity instruments, neither clearly dominates the other.

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

Understanding Land in the Context of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: A Brief History of Land in Economics

In economics, land has been traditionally assumed to be a fixed production factor, both in terms of quantity supplied and mobility, as opposed to capital and labor, which are usually considered to be mobile factors, at least to some extent. Yet, in the last decade, international investors have expressed an unexpected interest in farmland and in land-related investments, with the demand for land brusquely rising at an unprecedented pace. In spite of a fast-growing literature analyzing the variety of “spaces” affected by large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), the contemporary process of “commodification” of land embedded in this phenomenon has taken present day economists by surprise. This paper reviews the evolution over time of the concept of land in economics and it suggests how different aspects of this evolution are relevant to the understanding of contemporary LSLAs. Rather than presuming to analyze in a systematic and comprehensive manner the immense literature in land economics, this article investigates what makes land a peculiar and complex commodity. Indeed, different branches of economic thought, at different moments in time, pointed out that the location of land in space matters; that land is a living and fundamental component of the ecosystem; that it is a valuable economic asset, and yet, it is often hard to value it in pure monetary terms; eventually, that land is intrinsically connected to societies, cultural and spiritual identities, mores, and institutions. Through a brief history of the evolution of the concept of land in economics, this paper identifies four broad categories—namely, space, economics, environment, and institutions—that help understanding land as a peculiar good. These four elements characterize land as a commodity, as well as its peculiarities, and constitute the prerequisites of a conceptual framework for the analysis and the understanding of the forces at play in the contemporary wave of large-scale land acquisitions.