Alfonso Expósito

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• Ph. D. Economics
• Professor at University of Malaga

The new European Union regulation on the minimum requirements for the use of reclaimed water for irrigation entered into force in June 2023, thereby imposing concerns regarding the costs of this non-conventional resource for potential users in the context of increasing water scarcity in the Mediterranean region. This research offers a comprehensive...

Economic instruments constitute a key factor in successful water policy. Empirical evidence shows the advantages, but also the disadvantages, of their use in many case studies around the globe. This chapter offers an overview of these instruments and highlights case studies which have shown the multiple benefits of economic instruments in the manag...

The use of reclaimed water is expected to increase in the coming years, mainly in water-scarce areas. In the European Union (EU), an increase in the use of reclaimed water is expected to play a significant role within the European circular economy strategy and climate change adaptation policies with the aim to enhance overall sustainability of wate...

This authoritative Encyclopedia provides an innovative approach to theory, reviews, applications and examples relevant to the basic concepts of water science and water management issues in order to facilitate better interdisciplinary cooperation. In light of the broadening field and study of water management, the expert contributors set the basis...

Water scarcity and pollution are critical challenges affecting agriculture and aquatic ecosystems. This study evaluates the environmental benefits of using reclaimed water (RW) for irrigation in southern Spain by applying a comprehensive cost–benefit analysis (CBA) to a water reuse project. This method allows us to assess financial feasibility and...

This chapter offers an overview of water reuse in Spain at a regional level, with a detailed analysis of the advances in the use of reclaimed water in the last two decades. Our analysis aims to identify the benchmark regions in the use of reclaimed water by using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Specifically, it focuses on the assessment of...

The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the tourism sector hard, causing an unprecedented drop in activity. This has accentuated the need for robust tourism knowledge systems that provide intelligence, improvements in competitiveness and greater efficiency in the sector, taking advantage of its potential through more collaborative and di...

The academic concept of gender entrepreneurship began to attract attention in the early 1980s as entrepreneurship is considered a gendered phenomenon. In the last decades, its interests among scholar and policy makers have significantly grown, as gender equality has become a societal priority in all spheres, including business and economic sectors....

Digitalization has reshaped the way business is done. The incorporation of digital systems and tools, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of the Things in the business processes has brought disruptive changes in all business sectors. Innovation and digitalization are provoking changes in all kind of business aspects, both int...

The relationship between entrepreneur’s gender and business performance has been studied in existing literature assuming that it is a straight-forward direct relationship. Instead, in this study we examine how gender affects business performance through the introduction of innovations. Our aim is to explore the differences between men-led and women...

This book comprises six chapters prepared by the COST Action Circular City (https://circular-city.eu/). The Action aims to establish a network of researchers and stakeholders testing the hypothesis that: ‘A circular flow system that implements nature-based solutions (NBS) for managing nutrients and resources within the urban biosphere will lead to...

This paper analyses the impacts and water policy implications of an increase of perennial crops on irrigation water requirements and on the vulnerability of the agricultural system to climatic events in the case of the Guadalquivir River basin. As indicated by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), the characterisation of a river basin requires in...

Irrigation plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing food security. Increasing food production to meet the growing future demand of the world population will require not only the expansion of the irrigated area (through the conversion of rainfed land) and better water availability (both in space and time), but also greater efficiency in the use of r...

This paper explores the impacts of water pricing as a demand management policy, at a regional level (or basin-sector). To this aim, a hydro-economic model for the Guadalquivir River basin (southern Spain) is proposed here. This basin constitutes a perfect example of a Mediterranean basin subject to frequent and long drought periods, where challenge...

This study investigates the role of the entrepreneur’s gender on digitalization strategies undertaken by SMEs in the service and retail sectors. Specifically, we aim at testing how the gender of the entrepreneur may affect two different but related digitalization strategies: investment in software, and investment in equipment related to information...

National culture can influence the characteristics of entrepreneurship and, therefore, explain its different effects on income levels. This study aims to analyze the complex interactions between cultural values, entrepreneurship, and income levels in the context of Spain and Portugal. In particular, this study defines and investigates the efficient...

Aim of study: To assess the economic viability of implementing carbon fertilisation (CF) on the Campo de Dalías greenhouse agricultural sector. Area of study: Agricultural area of Campo de Dalías (Southeast of Spain), the highest density of greenhouses for horticulture in Europe, with an area of 21,285 ha of greenhouses, spread over an entire area...

This paper investigates the role of manager gender in SMEs’ decisions to get involved in exporting and importing activities, using a sample of 1,405 Spanish SMEs. We borrow insights from international entrepreneurship theories and feminist theories to set testable hypotheses regarding how managerial gender and entrepreneurial orientation (proactive...

Entrepreneurship constitutes a crucial factor for social and economic growth. Since the 1980s, many researchers have therefore studied the various stages that make up the business creation process, ranging from the potential to the consolidated phase. Recently, certain so-called high-growth ventures have attracted attention due to their greater imp...

Optimal water allocation on a seasonal basis is generally a decision taken with uncertainty regarding seasonal crop needs (unknown yield, precipitation and other environmental factors). Decision criteria, such as “irrigating for the good years of production” and "applying a little extra water just in case it is needed by the plant", are consistent...

This project builds on a strong multi-year partnership between IWRA and K-water, initiated in 2017, when IWRA undertook analysis of Smart Water Management (SWM) initiatives from around the world. For this new project, IWRA welcomes the incorporation of the AWC, an organization with a good understanding of the possibilities and challenges of impleme...

An increasing world population is projected to increase water, energy and food requirements, three vital resources for humankind. Projected climate change impacts will aggravate water availability, as well as flood risks, especially in urban areas. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been identified as key concepts to defuse the expected tensions wit...

Agriculture is not only the main user of water resources but is also the most intractable source of riverine and marine pollution. TRBs comprise about 47 percent of the world’s continental land area and Europe has the largest number of these transnational rivers, that is, 68 out of the total 286 in the world. DEA methods are based on a nonparametri...

This study analyses the impact of various types of innovation (product, process, organisational, and marketing innovation) on the business efficiency of small- and medium-sized hotel enterprises (SMHEs). Innovation in new products/services, support activities for the internal processes, sales channels or new positioning techniques for the product i...

The development and application of appropriate Circular Economy indicators is an issue that concerns both the scientific and the business community, as well as decision makers. The existing gap between research, policy and practice could be bridged by using a dynamic indicators selection approach that combines both expert and participatory practice...

This paper analyses the role of gender of the chief executive officer (CEO) on the propensity to introduce innovations using a sample of 1405 Spanish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We examine whether there are significant differences between female- and male-led businesses in terms of their propensity to innovate, and whether these dif...

Urban Green Spaces (UGS) can be a source of ecosystem service provision that exerts a positive impact on the wellbeing of users. The present study assessed the willingness to pay (WTP) for the UGS of Maria Luisa Park, located in the city of Seville (Spain). Compared with previous case studies, this UGS is characterized by the importance of the tour...

The EU project ‘Network for effective knowledge transfer on safe and economic wastewater reuse in agriculture in Europe (SUWANU-Europe)’ aims to identify the limitations and factors of success in fostering the use of reclaimed water by the agricultural sector in different European regions. This study shows the results of a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesse...

Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires member states to take account not only of the principle of cost recovery of water services, including environmental and resource costs (ERCs), but also of the use of water pricing as an environmental policy instrument; nevertheless, no common methodology exists for the estimation of financia...

This paper analyses the involvement of small firms in international trade activities by identifying the comprehensive impact of innovation. Specifically, we study how innovation introduced by these firms determines the entrepreneurial decision-making process regarding whether to engage in exporting and/or importing. Our results confirm the interrel...

Water - the most vital resource, negatively affected by the linear pattern of growth - still tries to find its positioning within the emerging concept of circular economy. Fragmented, sectorial circularity approaches hide the risk of underestimating both the preservation of and impacts to water resources and natural capital. In this study, a game c...

This study describes an economic model in the Guadalquivir river basin (Southern Spain) that considers inter-sectoral and hydrological effects of changes in water use as a response to various water-pricing policy scenarios. The main economic variables include water use, gross regional product, return flows in the river basin, and employment at sect...

This paper analyzes the work done by the economist Manuel de Torres Martínez (1903–1960), chair of economic theory at the University of Madrid, in the defense of an open economy model for Spain, through his prologues to the translations of foreign economics texts, during his period as director in Madrid of the economics section of the Publishing Ag...

This paper offers an exploratory microeconomic analysis of water use in the cultivation of almonds when water is considered a limiting production factor. When a crop is subjected to water limitation, the microeconomic principles behind irrigation decisions are based upon the water-yield relationship. The analysis is applied to an estimated water-yi...

Hydro-economic models (HEMs) constitute useful instruments to assess water-resource management and inform water policy. In the last decade, HEMs have achieved significant advances regarding the assessment of the impacts of water-policy instruments at a river basin or catchment level in the context of climate change (CC). This paper offers an overvi...

This study analyzes the environmental efficiency of the agricultural sector regarding the use of mineral fertilizers in the period 2001–2012 for a group of European countries. Specifically, efficiency is assessed through a dynamic Data Envelopment Analysis methodology. This method aims to analyze temporal efficiency changes through the estimation o...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) can protect, manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems. They are a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to address societal challenges and some natural hazards effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits. NBS applications can be easily noticed in circular cit...

This study aims to explore the existence of environmental Kuznets curves (EKCs) in urban water and energy use patterns at regional scale based on a wide data set of 336 municipalities in the Guadalquivir River Basin. A systematic analysis of the relationships between urban water-energy use patterns and indicators of economic development (i.e. incom...

El mejor acceso de las manufacturas europeas al mercado estadounidense derivado de la Asociación Transatlántica para el Comercio y la Inversión (TTIP en sus siglas en inglés) implicará una desviación de exportaciones manufactureras procedentes de terceros países, entre los que se encontrarían los miembros de la Comunidad Andina (CAN). Este trabajo,...

Water scarcity is increasing in many countries worldwide, and conflicts between alternative uses have arisen due to the high demand and the effects of climate change, among other factors. This paper employs a contingent valuation (CV) method to determine households’ willingness to pay (WTP) compensation to the irrigation sector to guarantee urban s...

Purpose –This paper examines the impact of Open Innovation (OI) cooperation strategies on innovation outcomes of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), considering the mediating effect of firm age. The data come from six Spanish regions in the period 2009-2011. We analyse the impacts of two different types of innovation cooperation (with market...

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been integrated in teaching activities to develop new learning environments. Within ICTs, the use of multimedia, such as instructional videos, has attracted significant academic attention. Nevertheless, the use of these technologies in teaching economics has generally lagged behind other discip...

This paper examines the impact of different types of innovation on the business performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using a multi-dimensional analytical approach. Based on a wide sample of Spanish SMEs, our results highlight the existence of positive impacts of innovation on financial and operational dimensions of business perf...

Water taxation in European Union (EU) countries is adapted to local conditions and institutional trajectories and contains a variety of taxes and tariffs to finance water services and induce a higher use efficiency. After having clarified certain concepts, this work offers an overview of water taxes and tariffs charged for agricultural water use in...

This paper proposes a methodology for the analysis of the evolution of irrigation water productivity that enables the decomposition of its driving factors. The method is applied to the Guadalquivir river basin (southern Spain) in the period 1989-2012 where water policy has aimed to achieve greater irrigation efficiency (IE), defined as the ratio of...

Regions and basins suffering from water scarcity have promoted the modernization of irrigation systems, defined as irrigation efficiency enhancement as a measure for the adaptation to a growing demand and a limited supply of water resources. In the period 2002–2015, Spain carried out an intense irrigation modernization process with the aim of achie...

Water scarcity in arid and semiarid regions of the world is increasing rapidly due to multiple factors, exacerbating competition over alternative water uses. This is especially relevant in the case of so-called closed water bodies, such as the Guadalquivir River Basin in southern Spain. This study tests the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothe...

In the EU context, industrial sectors have significantly reduced their energy consumption in the last decade. Despite significant disparities existing across industry branches, comparative studies focused on the effect of energy use in the production growth of the different industry branches are limited and not related to the EU countries. This stu...

The Cost Recovery Principle (CRP) is considered by the European Union (EU) water policy as a substantial requirement for economic efficiency, transparency, fairness, and sustainability in the use of water resources. Nevertheless, the implementation of the CRP by EU Member States has encountered significant challenges, both theoretical and practical...

The level of efficiency regarding the production of published scientific research in 2015 for the 48 state universities of the Spanish education system is assessed. It is used a methodological approach based on output specifications of desirable outputs (total amount of published papers in Q1 journals) and undesirable outputs (non-cited publication...

This article evaluates economic use values of groundwater and examines the trade-offs between agricultural and recreational uses of the Fuencaliente Aquifer in southern Spain. This case study is an example of the relevance of the non-market values of groundwater resources in achieving more sustainable management of groundwater resources, an issue o...

This article examines the impact of product, process and organisational innovations on two alternative dimensions of business performance: finance and operations. Two indicators capture financial performance: sales increase and production cost reduction. Operational firm performance is captured by two alternative indicators: productive capacity aug...

This paper analyzes the impact of students’ proactivity on academic performance based on a sample from students enrolled in an introductory course of Political Economy at the University of Seville (Spain) in three consecutive courses (2014–2015, 2015–2016 and 2016–2017). Proactivity is measured by several indicators, such as class attendance, case-...

Entrepreneurship, together with national cultural values, may improve a country’s GDP levels. Under this hypothesis, the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationships between the levels of entrepreneurship, cultural values, and of GDP per capita in a sample of 27 developed countries, by identifying an efficient combination of culture and entrep...

Increasing irrigation efficiency has been suggested as a solution in water scarce areas but its potential rebound effect (increased ex-post water consumption) is receiving growing attention; paradoxically, although improved irrigation efficiency may reduce water use, it may also increase water consumption. This paper undertakes an analytical review...

Groundwater governance has acquired relevant economic, social and political importance in the last decades, especially for developing countries where groundwater abstractions have become critical to sustain its growth. Nowadays there are few examples of effective groundwater governance. Despite the fact that most water policies target sustainabilit...

This paper focuses on the analysis of the efficiency of Spanish regions in the development of the recycling market in their respective territories through the use of a novel Data Envelopment Analysis method with multiple outputs. The efficiency analysis takes into account the mandatory goals of reducing mixed-collected municipal solid waste and the...

Este estudio analiza la capacidad de los modelos económicos para generar un “eficiente” crecimiento económico que reduzca los niveles de pobreza y mejore la distribución de la riqueza generada como resultado de ese crecimiento. Para ello, aplicaremos un método de optimización basado en el Análisis Envolvente de Datos a una muestra de países latinoa...

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a unique and historic piece of environmental legislation, combining ecological and economic dimensions. The aim of the WFD is to ensure sustainable socio-economic management of the resource, protecting the quantity and quality of water. The complexity of this political, ecological and economic framewo...

Deficit irrigation (DI) is an agricultural practice in which the volume of irrigation water applied during the crop cycle is below the irrigation requirements for maximum production, the aim of which is to increase irrigation water productivity. Most research on this technique has focused on agronomic strategies while the economic and environmental...

This paper analyses the agricultural irrigation water use in a closed basin and the impacts on water productivity, and examines how they have affected the ‘closure’ process of the Guadalquivir river basin observed in recent decades. Following a period of expansion in irrigation, an administrative moratorium was declared on new irrigated areas in 20...

This paper explores the impact on water demand of the adoption of deficit and precision irrigation as a farmer’s attempt to respond to water scarcity by maximising water productivity. The case study is characterised by the intensive use of deficit irrigation techniques in olive groves, which account for 50% of all irrigated land in southern Spain....

Antecedentes: La creación de la Asociación Transatlántica para el Comercio y la Inversión (TTIP, por sus siglas en inglés) que actualmente negocian los Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea tendrá importantes repercusiones en el comercio mundial, especialmente para aquellas economías con una elevada dependencia comercial de alguno de los bloques firman...

This study analyzes the ability of economic models to generate “efficient” economic growth that reduces poverty levels and improves the distribution of wealth generated as a result of that growth. To do this, we will testly an optimization method based on the Data Envelopment Analysis to a sample of Latin American countries in which the problem of...

This research paper analyzes the economics of deficit irrigation based on the use of subjective estimates of the crop yield–water relationship to determine water supply in irrigated olive groves. Interviewed farmers were asked to give three estimates for the yield-water relationship as a function of water supply (full irrigation, usual deficit irri...

RESUMEN Este trabajo analiza el coste del servicio de abastecimiento urbano de agua en la Demarcación del Guadalquivir a partir de la información contenida en los Informes de Revisión de Tarifas del Abastecimiento Urbano de 2003. Este análisis ha permitido obtener una estimación del coste real por metro cúbico facturado, así como estudiar la impo...

Este trabajo analiza el desarrollo del sector turístico en los países mediterráneos asociados a la UE (Argelia, Marruecos, Túnez, Egipto, Jordania, Líbano, Siria, Israel, Palestina, Chipre, Malta y Turquía, también conocidos como PAM), durante la década de los años 90 y en sus dos dimensiones, de oferta y demanda, con objeto de identificar los desa...