The Nobel Prize committee awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." The microfinance revolution has come a long way since Yunus first provided financing to the poor in Bangladesh. The committee has recognized microfinance as "an important liberating force" and an "ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty." Although several authors have provided comprehensive surveys of microfinance, our aim is somewhat more modest: This article is intended as a non-technical overview on the growth and development of microcredit and microfinance. (JEL I3, J41, N80)
As a result of increasing population growth and water demand, many researchers and practitioners advocate a "soft path" approach to water supply development, in which future water needs are met through a combination of various demand-side conservation measures (AWWA Climate Change Committee, 2011;Brandes & Brooks, 2006;Gleick, 2003). The soft path approach recognizes that water is a "normal" good in the sense that water is required for human life and most people in developed countries can turn on a tap, flush a toilet, or take a shower without thinking twice about the source but, more important, that water is normal in an economic sense. As prices rise, consumers tend to use less. Increasingly, water managers, utility councils, and board members are developing a better understanding of this definition of water as a normal good and are using conservation-oriented rate structures as part of the long-term management of water supplies.Conservation rate structures take a variety of forms, but at the root, these structures share a basic tenet that water gets more expensive at higher and more discretionary levels of use. This study considered a conservation rate structure to be either an increasing block rate (IBR) or a seasonal rate structure. In an IBR, the "usage in each succeeding block is charged at a higher unit rate than the previous blocks" (AWWA, 2000). Under a seasonal rate structure, water prices increase during summer months in order to reduce demand that is primarily associated with seasonal irrigation. A few utilities, primarily in the West, have also implemented rate structures based on water budgets. Beecher (2012) provides a comprehensive overview of water budget rate structures and discusses the relative merits of the price and nonprice signals inherent in this rate design. Under a water budget rate, households are typically allocated a quantity of water based on household size, lot size, and landscaping mixture. Prices generally follow an IBR structure within each household allocation. In contrast, some utilities use a declining block rate structure (DBR), in which the unit price of water decreases with higher levels of consumption; a flat rate, in which all customers pay the same amount per billing period regardless of use; or a uniform rate, in which all users pay the same unit price for any level of consumption. Water budget rates are not considered in the context of this report.This research provides new findings that take advantage of the 2010 AWWA and Raftelis Financial Consulting (RFC) Rate Survey (AWWA & RFC, 2010). This data set allows a comparison of utilities and rate structures across the United States and permits consideration of the variables that most influence the adoption of conservation rate structures. It also allows the effect of prices on water demand to be isolated when the effects of population growth, climate, and other drivers of demand are held constant. By examining aggregate demand at the utility level, the researchers considered the important question of how price and nonp...
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