Most of the books published previously in the field of water resource eco nomics focus on particular aspects of water economics such as institutions, pricing or water markets, but none of them have given particular attention to methodological questions. However, the applied methodology within economic research has made some remarkable advances over the last 10-20 years. Some of these advances are of particular interest to the field of water economics. Therefore, we think that a book that focusing on methodological advances within the field of water resource economics and showing how these advances can be applied in economic analysis of water issues makes a nice complement to the existing literature in this field. We identified five areas where we consider the methodological advances to be of particular importance: 1) asymmetric information and game theory, 2) un certainty, 3) space, 4) water quality and 5) production and technology adoption. The selected papers for the book fall entirely within these categories. The book ''Frontiers in Water Resource Economics" draws to a great extent on papers which were presented at the 7^^ Conference of the International Water and Re source Economics Consortium, June 3-5,2001 held in Girona, Catalonia, Spain, This conference was jointly organized with the 4^^ Conference of Environmen tal and Resource Economics by the Department of Economics, University of Girona.

Application of stochastic cooperative games in water resources/Ariel Dinar, Stefano Moretti, Fioravante Patrone and Stefano Zara.-Incentives and the search for unknown resources such as water/Jean-Jacques Laffont and Francois Salanie.-Risk aversion and gains from water trading under uncertain water availability/Javier Calatrava Leyva and Alberto Garrido.-Dynamic uncertainty and the pricing of natural monopolies: the case of urban water management/Ephraïm Clark and Gerard Mondello.-Price risk and the diffusion of conservation technology/Georgina Moreno and David Sunding.-Optimal management of groundwater over space and time /Nicholas Brozovic, David Sunding and David Zilberman.-Nonpoint source pollution in a spatial intertemporal context - a deposit refund approach/Renan-Ulrich Goetz, Dolors Berga and ÿngels Xabadia.-Transboundary water management along the U.S.-Mexico border/Linda Fernandez.- Irrigation, water quality and water rights in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia/Stephen Beare and Anna Heaney.-Economic analysis of green payments to protect water quality/Madhu Khanna and Richard Farnsworth.-Conjunctive use of surface and groundwater with quality considerations/Catarina Roseta-Palma.-The impact of recovering irrigation water losses on the choice of irrigation technology with heterogeneous land quality and different crops/Petra J.G.J. Hellegers.-Precision farming in cotton /David Zilberman, Daniel Cohen-Vogel and Jeanne Reeves.