Allocation of Flowing Water between Upstream and Downstream Regions

유수자원(流水資源)의 지역간 배분 보상

High population and economic growth leads to ever increasing demand for water resources, prompting many regional conflicts for the water. With the observation, this paper examines the allocation problem of flowing water between upstream and downstream regions, We offer a two- region model in which the downstream region pays a portion of product to the upstream region in order to induce the upstream region to share the water. Our model shows that the "side-payment" does not always work, because the ex post income of the downstream region could be lower than the income without the side-payment This happens when the externality the upstream region imposes on the downstream region is small. The paper derives the condition under which the incentive mechanism like side-payment is likely to fail (or work). The model also shows that the higher the degree of externality is, the less amount of side-payment should be. The results of the paper suggest that the incentive scheme can help the regional conflicts be solved if the externality effect generated by the water use of upstream region is big enough, which is in fact the case where the conflict is severe.