Regulating invasive species with different life history

Katarina Elofsson and Ing-Marie Gren

Journal of Bioeconomics, 2015, vol. 17, issue 2, 113-136

Abstract: Invasive species often cause economic damage due to their impact on economically valuable resident species. We study optimal regulation in terms of simultaneous control and adaptation when the purpose is to manage an invasive species which competes for scarce resources with a resident species. The optimal policy includes both subsidies for control of an invasive species with zero commercial value, and harvesting taxes on the resident species which are adjusted in the presence of an invasion. A numerical age-structured optimization model is used to analyze the role of species’ life history, i.e. the degree of evolutionary specialization in survival or reproduction, for the choice of strategy and the associated economic instruments. Results show that, irrespective of life history, both policies are implemented in efficient solutions, but subsidies for controlling the invader are used to a larger extent when it is possible to target specific age classes of the invader. If a resident species is harvested non-selectively, the optimal subsidy for control of the invader is lower, and if the invader is specialized in survival the control subsidy mirrors the resident species harvest cycle. Copyright The Author(s) 2015

Keywords: Invasive species; Life history; Control subsidy; Harvesting tax; Adaptation; Q28; Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10818-014-9183-y (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:113-136

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10818/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10818-014-9183-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Bioeconomics is currently edited by Ulrich Witt, Michael T. Ghiselin and David Sloan Wilson

More articles in Journal of Bioeconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().