Ground Water Irrigation and Property Rights in Northwestern Spain

经济学最近最有价值的理论发展之一是把交易成本作为经济制度的决定因素。这一奖项授予天主教大学的一位经济人类学家，将支持一项关于20世纪西班牙北部地下水灌溉系统发展的研究。利用新制度经济学的交易成本概念以及认知科学中的图式理论，该项目将试图解释为什么农民选择了某些形式的产权和灌溉系统，而不是当地可用的其他形式。这些方法包括档案数据、人种学和汇编该地区的地理信息系统。这项研究很重要，因为它将为我们在特定情况下如何选择经济机构的知识提供一个根本性的进步。交易成本、经济学和认知科学等不同领域的理论和概念的结合将促进这两个领域的知识。该项目将创造关于产权安排的知识，这将对区域用水规划者预测地下水开采率具有实际意义。作为全球变化研究项目的人的层面，创造的知识将促进我们对人们如何使其文化和经济机构适应可用于维持农业的地下水资源的变化的理解。

One of the most valuable recent theoretical developments in economics has been the focus on transactions costs as determinative of economic institutions. This award to an economic anthropologist at Catholic University will support a study of the 20th century development of groundwater irrigation systems in Northern Spain. Using transactions cost concepts from the `new institutional economics` as well as from schema theory in cognitive science, the project will try to explain why farmers selected certain forms of property rights and irrigation systems over others that were locally available. The methods include archival data, ethnography and the compilation of a Geographic Information System for the area. This research is important because it will provide a fundamental advance in our knowledge of how economic institutions are selected in specific situations. The combination of theory and concepts from diverse fields like transactions costs economics and cognitive science will advance knowledge in both areas. The knowledge that the project will create about property rights arrangements will be of practical relevance to regional water use planners in anticipating extraction rates of ground water. As a human dimensions of global change research project the knowledge created will advance our understanding of how people adapt their cultural and economic institutions to changes in ground-water resources available to sustain agriculture.