| Summary: | The sustainable management of the environment has emerged as a major conceptual and policy challenge. In this thesis, I discuss both general theoretical considerations and aspects of a striking and important case study. In chapters 1-4, I study the dynamics of collective decisions on long-term investments in public goods, in situations in which different stake-holders disagree on the relative valuation of short-term costs and future benefits. The discussion is inspired by climate change economics but is general. Chapters 5-8 discuss aspects of the depletion of groundwater in India, one of the most dramatic resource sustainability crisis in the world, and analyze empirically the implications for irrigation, in terms of sustainability, efficiency and reliability.
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