David Seckler

• PhD Economics (London School of Economics)
• Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University

Part I: Global Water Scarcity 1995–2025 Part Ii: Water And Food-demand And Supply Food Demand Conclusion

This paper presents a statistically valid index for measuring the performance of irrigation systems. The index is applied to a sample of 39 farms on a watercourse under the warabandi system of irrigation management in India. It is found that while the farmers in fact irrigated almost exactly the total amount of irrigated area as designed, inter-far...

This book presents a state of the art review of the limits and opportunities for improving water productivity in crop production, focusing on both irrigated and rain-fed agriculture. It provides concepts, methodologies, constraints and examples drawn from a wealth of experience from developing and developed countries. It demonstrates how efficiency...

Groundwater offers us few but precious opportunities for alleviating the misery of the poor; but it poses manyԡnd dauntingԣhallenges of preserving the resource itself. A big part of the answer is massive initiatives to augment groundwater recharge in regions suffering depletion; but, in the ultimate analysis, these cannot work without appropriate d...

"Of the four major ways of storing water -in the soil profile, in underground aquifers, in small reservoirs, and in large reservoirs behind dams-the first is possible only for relatively short periods of time. In this paper, the authors concentrate on the three kinds of long-term technologies, and compare the hydrological, operational, economic and...

Water scarcity is determined by a variety of factors. In this paper we summarize some key issues for water management that will influence the degree of scarcity that different countries and regions will face in the coming 25 years. These questions are covered in detail in the IWMI monograph that was published as the Institute's contribution to the...

As we approach the next century, more than a quarter of the world's population or a third of the population in developing countries live in regions that will experience severe water scarcity. This paper reports on a study to project water supply and demand for 118 countries over the 1990-2025 period. The nature and geographic focus of growing water...

Global food projections indicate that food prices in the next threedecades will likely be stable or decline, but progress inreducing malnutrition in developing countries will be slow. Smallshortfalls in crop productivity growth would lead to rising foodprices and worsening malnutrition. Increased food production fromirrigation is essential, and wil...

In the haste to instal and extend large-scale irrigation schemes, their management has been neglected. Improving management, in turn, depends on the development of effective monitoring methods suitable to the system in use. The warabandi system of irrigation in Northwest India is examined here. Observation was focused on one distributary, the area...

In the book which provoked individualist/institutionalist controversy in several journals, including this one, the author emphasized aspects of “muddled” thinking in the work of Clarence E. Ayres which he believes has brought forth neo-institutionalist contributions that are a “hodge-podge.” Neo-institutionalism, he is convinced, is a form of histo...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

Proposals for strict enforcement and, conversely, for relaxation or elimination of acreage limitations in federal irrigation projects have arisen in response to recent court decisions regarding two large California irrigation districts. These proposals are examined against criteria including distributive justice, allocative efficiency, and administ...

This paper provides an empirical framework for testing a welfare change measure by considering the following problem: a public agency is faced with the decision of how to maximize public welfare from optimally locating a large-scale national recreational ...

An integrated public-private approach to mechanical harvesting of tomatoes for canning has sharply reduced producers’ labor requirements. gross social returns to aggregate research and development expenditures are in the vicinity of 1, 000 percent. even if displaced labor had been compensated for wage loss, net social returns are still highly favor...

CAB International 2003. Water Productivity in Agriculture: Limits and Opportunities for Improvement (eds J.W. Kijne, R. Barker and D. Molden) 37 All science depends on its concepts. These are the ideas which receive names. They determine the questions one asks, and the answers one gets. They are more fundamental than the theories which are stated i...

There exists, in the theory of regional economic development, a gaping desideratum. This may be stated best in vernacular: ‘Can a region lift itself by its own bootstraps?’ Is a region, within a larger economy, capable of strictly endogenous, self-sustained growth? In 1956, a very thoughtful and stimulating debate between Douglass C. North and Char...

Traducción de: Thorstein Veble and the Institucionalists. A Study in the Social Philosophy of Economics Estudio sobre el institucionalismo, corriente del economista y sociólogo norteamericano Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), conocido en especial por su primera obra, Teoría de la clase ociosa (1899). Veblen anticipó en este trabajo algunos temas de los...

"A global estimate of the potential for rain-fed agriculture could provide an answer to the question 'How much irrigation is required?' Global studies done to date have relied on course resolution climate data (0.5-1 degree arc). In this study a high-resolution climate dataset (10-minute arc) was combined with a soil water storage capacity map and...

Incluye índice

Traducción de: Thorsten Veblen and the Institucionalists a study in the social philosophy of economics