Book Description

Water Matters is a book that dispels the myth of economics as the “dismal science.” The book puts a noted microeconomist, author Franklin M. Fisher, in the midst of one of the most intractable clashes of the twentieth century: the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, and in particular the conflict over water between Israel, the Palestinians, and the Jordanians. Fisher found himself drawn to an academic challenge—how could economics inform the resolution of a dispute over a natural resource desperately needed by people—and drawn into a complex and fascinating maze of political and institutional intrigue. Along the way, Fisher met and worked with a host of people from politics, academia, bureaucracies—many with what seem like larger-than-life personalities. Some of them became his friends. The story in Water Matters is told as part memoir and part explication of the technical, organizational, and institutional challenges an academic economist faced in developing a model aimed at helping guide negotiations to solve an obstinate geopolitical problem. It is also a narrative about how negotiation happens, along with what works and what does not. The technical challenges the author and his colleagues faced are explained in lay terms that will teach many readers, and the memoir is a rich narrative of people, places, travel, and culture—told from the perspective of an American Jew dropped into a unique situation—where he never expected to be and in the company of people he never expected to meet.