Water Institutions and Sector Performance: A Quantitative Analysis with Cross-Country Data

Abstract

"As the world ushers into the new millennium, water scarcity--both in its quantitative and qualitative manifestations--is emerging as a major development challenge for many countries. While water quantity is a key problem in countries racing towards their physical limits to fresh water expansion, water quality is a major concern in countries with an expanding industrial sector, commercialized agriculture, and urban settlements. Since pollution-induced water quality deterioration reduces the utility of the existing water resources, water scarcity also emerges the serious economic ecological, and welfare consequences of floods in many countries, water crisis is also to be viewed in a much broader sense than as a mere scarcity issue."