Ground Water Irrigation and Property Rights in Northwestern Spain

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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.