Allocation and pricing at the water district level

Efficient water pricing schemes are introduced for nonprofit water agencies, where members have property rights based upon historical usage. The existing average cost rate design is compared with the proposed designs, "active trading" and "passive trading." Both schemes lead to efficiency, but "passive trading" has operational advantages since it generates less transaction costs than "active trading." Block rate pricing is shown to be suboptimal and inferior to "passive trading." An example from the Israeli water economy is used as an empirical illustration.