Calendrier du 15 septembre 2021
Development Economics Seminar
Du 15/09/2021 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan
MUHAMMAD Haseeb (University of Geneva)
Resource Scarcity and Cooperation
Climate change is likely to increase the risk of both transitory and prolonged water shortages in many developing countries. It is unclear how communities sharing joint water resources will respond to these shortages. This paper shows that water scarcity can have a different effect on cooperation over water, depending on whether the shortage is transitory or long term. Using daily outlet-level water theft data from Pakistan, I first show that an unexpected short-term water shortage increases the probability of over-extraction of surface water. Then, I examine how farmers respond to long-term scarcity by exploiting a natural experiment that decreases the effective availability of groundwater – the key substitute for surface water – through an increase in groundwater pollution. The instrumented difference-in-differences estimates show that, in contrast to a short-term shock, long term scarcity increases inter-village cooperation. Moreover, farmers experiencing long-term scarcity become better at managing water theft under transitory water shortages. Finally, I provide evidence that informal institutions and caste networks are important for managing water theft under prolonged scarcity. Taken together, these results suggest that long-term environmental change can push communities to adapt by investing in informal mechanisms that enforce cooperation.