{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020385050962627407, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004530011325028313, 'mean_word_length': 5.452554744525547, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Markets, Contracts, and Uncertainty: A Structural Model of a Groundwater Economy

We develop a contract-theoretical model of groundwater transactions in rural India, emphasizing the role of payo uncertainty, which arises in our context due to unpredictable uctuations in groundwater availability during the dry season. Our focus is on the tradeo between the ex-post ineciency of seasonal contracts and the ex-ante ineciency of more exible water-selling arrangements. We structurally estimate the model using micro-data on area irrigated under each transaction type combined with subjective probability distributions of end-of-season well output collected from over 2000 well-owners across six districts of Andhra Pradesh. The estimated parameters are used to back out the implicit cost of excessive land fragmentation, the absence of which would render groundwater markets superuous.