Water Rights and Markets in Chile: Efficiency and Social Equity in Agricultural Irrigation

This paper addresses the neoliberal assumptions for private property rights to incentivise water and water markets. Chile´s 1981 Water Code is used to display the juxtaposition of efficiency and social equity of water markets in providing water access for different groups within a liberalised agricultural sector. The fruit industry is a specific example for the incentive to allocate water to high-value production for national and transnational fruit companies. New Institutional Economics provides a realistic perspective to the socio-economic power dynamics in the competition for scarce water resources within water markets.