Overall, pricing policies in France seem to be driven primarily by the objective to ensure cost recovery and agency’s budget balance, although this is achieved by a great variety of pricing mechanisms (Rieu, 2005). Dono and Severini (2001) add further evidence from southern Italy to the inelasticity hypothesis, and suggest that water demand turns increasingly inelastic as water charges increase, as the crops that may be able to pay higher prices are mainly high-value vegetables and fruits, which can support high water price increases. He claims that the effects on water demand are due to the fact that if water prices are below the exit threshold, they result in demand reductions caused by marginal adaptation of irrigation demand to price variations.