“The Illiquidity of Water Markets: Efficient Institutions for Water Allocation in Southeastern Spain,” research paper by Javier D. Donna and José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez (2018)

This paper shows how the presence of liquidity constraints in farmers can make a market for water inefficient, and discusses under what conditions this would happen and when a system of uniform allocation (quotas) could be more efficient than a market. The co-authors of the paper were awarded the Public Utility Research Center Prize for the best paper in regulatory economics at the 2016 International Industrial Organization Conference (IIOC).