A Hoover forum on politics, economics, and society featuring Gary Libecap, the Sherm and Marge Telleen Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution was held on May 13. Libecap led a discussion on “California’s Water Crisis and the Role of Water Markets as a Solution.”
An expert on property rights institutions—how they emerge and change and how they affect behavior and economic outcomes, most of Libecap’s research has focused on the problems of the common pool and how they are or are not effectively addressed. His current research examines the legal and regulatory transaction costs of water marketing in the semi-arid western United States.
In addition to being a Hoover fellow, Libecap is the Bren Professor of Corporate Environmental Policy, Donald R. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, Massachusetts; a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), Bozeman, Montana; and a member of the Research Group on Political Institutions and Economic Policy, Harvard University. He has written a number of books and articles, most recently “Chinatown”: Owens Valley and Its Meaning for Western Water Today, (“Chinatown”: Owens Valley and Its Meaning for Western Water Today, (Stanford University Press, 2007).
