Conference Paper

Economic and Distributional Effects of Dams: Evidence from Iran

No.

ERF30_69

Publisher

ERF

Date

March, 2024

We examine the economic and distributional effects of dams in rural areas. We introduce a novel identification strategy combined with a range of novel measures such as agricultural land rent, revenue, profit and population which are observed at a highly spatially disaggregated level in Iran for about two decades. We demonstrate that downstream areas tend to benefit from dams, whereas other areas do not benefit, or even lose, for example in terms of population. In particular, land owners of downstream areas benefit: the elasticity of agricultural land rent in downstream areas with respect to volume of dams is positive and about 0.03 to 0.05. Overall, the monetary benefits of dams identified by us, in terms of higher rents, wages and profits, cover only 20% of the investment cost of dams. We also demonstrate that using data at a more aggregated level, which is common in the literature, masks important distributional effects.
Economic and Distributional Effects of Dams: Evidence from Iran

Authors

Hans Koster

Full Professor of Urban Economics and Real...

Economic and Distributional Effects of Dams: Evidence from Iran

Authors

Jos van Ommeren

Fellow, Tinbergen Institute

Economic and Distributional Effects of Dams: Evidence from Iran

Authors

Saeed Tajrishy

PhD Candidate, Sharif University

Economic and Distributional Effects of Dams: Evidence from Iran

Research Fellows

Mohammad Vesal

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Management and...