Pipes, Taps and Vendors: An Integrated Water Management Approach

28 Pages Posted: 30 Nov 2020

See all articles by Georg Meran

Georg Meran

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)

Markus Siehlow

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)

Christian von Hirschhausen

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - Department of International Economics

Date Written: November 2020

Abstract

This paper applies a microeconomic-based stylized model to identify the optimal modal split of water supply infrastructure in regions of the Global South against the background of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 6. We assume a linear city, with some plausible assumptions on income and willingness-to-pay, and then calculate the optimal tap density, leading in turn to an optimal modal split between piped and unconnected water consumption. From an economic perspective, not all water users need to be connected to a centralized, pipeline infrastructure, and the non-connected households should be served by non-mobile or mobile vendors. The analysis is firstly made for the case of totally inelastic demand functions for simplification reasons and afterwards the analysis becomes more complicated and realistic by addressing elastic demand functions which are based on a simplified version of the Stone-Geary utility function. In terms of policy implications, the paper suggests a role for decentral, offgrid solutions to generalized water supply, with a certain role for water vendors.

Keywords: Water, Infrastructure, mobile vendors, integrated planning, informal economy

JEL Classification: C31,R12,O17,Q25

Suggested Citation

Meran, Georg and Siehlow, Markus and von Hirschhausen, Christian, Pipes, Taps and Vendors: An Integrated Water Management Approach (November 2020). DIW Berlin Discussion Paper No. 1916, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3737363 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3737363

Georg Meran

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) ( email )

Straße des 17
Juni 135
Berlin, 10623
Germany

Markus Siehlow

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) ( email )

Straße des 17
Juni 135
Berlin, 10623
Germany

Christian Von Hirschhausen (Contact Author)

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - Department of International Economics ( email )

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany
+49-30-89789-343 (Phone)
+49/30/897 89 -200 (Fax)

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