Eradication and the optimal management of a spreading invader

David Finnoff, Alex Potapov and Mark Lewis

    Economists have been studying the optimal management of biological nuisances for over three decades. While the bulk of the research has focused upon policies to combat agricultural pests there has been recently been an explosion of research into the more general question of the economics of invasive species, extending the consequences of the pests beyond those in agriculture.
    In this talk I will review recent bioeconomic models that consider the optimal management of a spreading invasive species.  In this the general problem from an economist's perspective will be framed and structured to demonstrate why interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary yet tends to be tricky to implement.  Then an example of successful collaboration over the problem of optimal stopping of a spreading invasive species is developed.  The framework captures enough necessary realities of the problem yet is basic enough to generate some simple analytical insight.  The goal of the research is to be as readily applicable as possible and of as much use as possible to policy makers.  The framework is applied to the spread of zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) across inland lakes in North America.  Results are shown hinge on the relationship between damages of invasion and the costs of stopping the spread of the invader, with three basic decision rules for resource managers being generated.