| Description |
Pakistan currently faces a multifaceted water crisis that goes beyond mere water scarcity and threatens prospects for sustainable development in the country. As in many developing countries, the public utilities are not able to supply water to everyone so consumers are forced to obtain water from multiple sources, including private water vendors. Traditionally, analysis of these markets has focused on supply and demand curves for single commodities rather than considering markets for the attributes of those commodities. In this dissertation, I will use tools from both neoclassical microeconomics as well as institutional economics in order to analyze water as a multifaceted good and and discuss how institutions shape preferences and make possible the production of water with different attributes. This will involve analyzing the markets for water attributes on the supply and demand side. I will also discuss some of the history of institutional change in the water sector in Pakistan. Using data from a discrete choice experiment, I find support for the hypothesis that demand for water attributes differs in the population, as well as partial support for the idea that institutions can explain some of these differences. |
