Abstract The Ogallala Aquifer is the main water resource for irrigated agricultural production in much of Western Kansas. It is hypothesized that as crop price expectations increase, producers will apply more water to increase yields in order to maximize profit. Using field-level panel data on groundwater pumped for irrigation in Western Kansas, this paper examines whether irrigated producers’ groundwater pumping decisions are consistent with the profit maximization framework by empirically testing if crop price expectations have a positive impact on the quantity of groundwater pumped. In general, the empirical results indicate that crop price expectations have no statistically significant impact on the quantity of groundwater pumped per acre. This suggests that groundwater pumping decisions are not consistent with the profit maximization framework and that irrigated producers consider groundwater as a fixed input possibly due to limited availability of groundwater in the area. Our econometric analysis also suggests that only a small portion of rainfall is effective.

中文翻译：

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作物价格预期重要吗？堪萨斯西部地下水抽取决策分析

摘要 Ogallala 含水层是堪萨斯州西部大部分地区灌溉农业生产的主要水资源。假设随着作物价格预期的提高，生产者将使用更多的水来增加产量，以实现利润最大化。本文利用堪萨斯州西部抽取用于灌溉的地下水的田间面板数据，通过实证检验作物价格预期是否对抽取的地下水量产生积极影响，来检验灌溉生产者的地下水抽取决策是否与利润最大化框架一致。总的来说，实证结果表明，作物价格预期对每英亩抽取的地下水量没有统计上的显着影响。这表明地下水抽取决策与利润最大化框架不一致，灌溉生产者将地下水视为固定输入，可能是由于该地区地下水的可用性有限。我们的计量经济学分析还表明，只有一小部分降雨是有效的。