The Economic and Welfare Effects of Different irrigation

The scarcity of water resources and supply resources limitation,have caused an increasing gap between water supply and demandspecially in recent decades in almost all regions of theglobe. one of the best known solutions proposed by the economistsis using the different water pricing approaches thereby obtainingthe optimal allocation and social justice. to this purpose, thispaper uses the positive mathematical programming (pmp) andeconometric mathematical programming (emp) in a comparativeanalysis to study the economic and welfare impacts of alternativewater pricing approaches in the agricultural sector duringagricultural period 2011/2012 in khomein plain of markaziprovince in iran. results show that the emp can be a better alternativeapproach instead of pmp to better analyze of agriculturalpolicies. according to the final outcomes, it is suggested to applythe block tariff in place of volumetric pricing method to reach theoptimal allocation and promoting the water efficiency in theprice range of 198 to 853 rials.