Resumen de Whose Values Count? Demand Management for Melbourne's Water

Geoff Edwards

• An assessment is provided of Melbourne's rising block tariff for water and its prescriptive regulation of water use through non-price restrictions. The three-step rising block tariff fares poorly on economic efficiency and on widely used notions of equity. A two-block tariff could remove much of the inefficiency in a three-block tariff, but one-price-for-all water would be the most efficient way to ration water on conventional definitions. The non-price restrictions on water use are prescriptive, denying households the opportunity to decide how to make any cuts in water use required of them. State values usurp private values.