Skip Navigation


European Review of Agricultural Economics Advance Access originally published online on October 19, 2009
European Review of Agricultural Economics 2009 36(3):295-320; doi:10.1093/erae/jbp030
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
36/3/295    most recent
jbp030v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Surkov, I. V.
Right arrow Articles by van der Werf, W.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© Oxford University Press and Foundation for the European Review of Agricultural Economics 2009; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The optimal amount and allocation of sampling effort for plant health inspection

Ilya V. Surkov, Alfons G.J.M. Oude Lansink and Wopke van der Werf

Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Corresponding author: Alfons Oude Lansink, Business Economics, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, EW-6700 Wageningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: alfons.oudelansink{at}wur.nl

Received February 2008; final version received April 2009

Plant import inspection can prevent the introduction of exotic pests and diseases, thereby averting economic losses. We explore the optimal allocation of a fixed budget, taking into account risk differentials, and the optimal-sized budget to minimise total pest costs. A partial-equilibrium market model is used to compute the economic consequences of pest invasion. An application to Dutch imports of chrysanthemum cuttings shows that the optimal allocation of a fixed inspection budget halves the cost of pest invasion compared to allocating the same budget equally over all imports. A budget increase that enables 42 per cent more inspection can reduce total societal costs by 81 per cent compared to smaller, constrained budget that ignores risk differentials.

Keywords: import inspection, quarantine, plant pests, budget constraints, resource allocation

JEL classification: Q18, Q13

* Review coordinated by Thomas Heckelei.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.