Institutions, transaction costs and environmental policy: Institutionalreform for water resources

摘要

Deriving from his award-winning post-graduate research, Challen's examination of transaction costs in institutional change in the mature Australian water economy provides a valuable addition to the 'New Horizons in Environmental Economics' series edited by Wallace E. Oates and Henk Folmer. This book will be of particular benefit to those with an interest in the application of New Institutional Economics to natural resource management. Moreover, the conceptual model developed in the book provides a useful framework for analysing general issues associated with institutional analysis and choice. The book itself comprises four main parts, which are further divided into eight chapters. The first part (Chapter 2) provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the literature pertaining to institutions, institutional change and transaction costs. In addition, a more detailed framework for examining institutions in natural resource management is developed which involves: identifying the institutional hierarchy for the resource situation being studied and then describing the institutions at each level of the hierarchy in terms of four parameters: the property rights regimes existing at the different levels of the hierarchy; the entitlement systems forming the basis of physical division of the resource; the mechanisms by which the entitlements are initially allocated amongst holders of the property rights; and the means by which allocations of entitlements can be altered over time. (p. 52).