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Rania Lachhab, Ph.D. (UC Berkeley) will be presenting:

“The Value of Groundwater Storage: Evidence from California’s Kern Water Bank”

Monday, February 2, 2026
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: SSPA-029C

Following the job talk, the Department of Economics encourages students to attend a 30-minute student meeting with the candidate at 4:30 PM in the SPA Conference Room.

This meeting provides an opportunity for students to meet the candidate, ask questions, and share their perspectives. Student participation is highly valued.

Remote Attendance:
The job talk (3:00–4:00 PM) will also be available via Zoom.

Topic: ECON Job Talk
Time: February 2, 2026, 3:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Zoom link:

Title: "The Value of Groundwater Storage: Evidence from California’s Kern Water Bank"

Abstract: Water banking has gained increasing policy attention as a means to mitigate drought risk and enhance long-term water security, yet assessing its economic value remains challenging. I estimate the value of groundwater storage with a hedonic analysis of the Kern Water Bank in California, which created spatial variation in access to storage based on whether a parcel was located within a participating water district. Leveraging a dataset of agricultural land transactions from Kern County, CA and surrounding areas spanning 1984 to 2021, and using a difference-in-difference approach and a spatial regression discontinuity design, I find that access to the Kern Water Bank significantly increased land values, with an almost 50% rise in the per-acre price of parcels within participating water districts relative to those outside following the start of the bank in 1995. This corresponds to an increase of $1640 per acre in the price of land with access to the water bank, summing up to $1.1 billion in private benefits to landowners. A simple cost-benefit analysis shows that the benefits exceed the costs of implementing and operating the bank by over tenfold. These findings underscore the substantial economic benefits of water banking infrastructure and suggest important implications for water policy in regions facing growing water scarcity and climate variability. Additionally, this work informs discourse on intertemporal arbitrage, consumption smoothing, and the role of technological and institutional innovation in facilitating efficient resource use under uncertainty.

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