Reducing water consumption after targeted subsidy plan in Iran

There are several methods for saving water, and pricing is one of these methods. The Iranian government implemented targeted subsidies in 2010. According to this plan some basic items like water subsidies were eliminated. In this note we examine the effects of the plan on reducing water use. We have used the time series model, SARIMA, to model water use before targeted subsidies. We predicted water consumption for months after the targeted subsidy plan. We used the Wilcoxon sign rank test for comparison of estimated and actual amounts of water for a period after targeted subsidies. We concluded at 1% significance level that targeted subsidies have reduced domestic water consumption.