TITLE:
Ship Inspections in Invasive Species Management: Alternate Regimes and Their Properties
AUTHORS:
Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Hamid Beladi
KEYWORDS:
Inspection; Invasive Species; Management; Performance Measure; Uncertainty
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.3 No.5A,
August
26,
2013
ABSTRACT: When it comes to inspections in invasive
species management, the literature has shown that there is frequently a tension
between economic cost reduction and inspection stringency. As such, we analyze
the properties of two probabilistic inspection regimes that are designed to
screen arriving ships in a seaport for the presence of one or more deleterious
invasive species. In the first regime, the seaport inspector screens arriving
ships by using fast (less stringent) and slow (more stringent) protocols. In
the second regime, the inspector uses a uniformly stringent protocol with
stages. We use the theory of continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs) to delineate
both inspection regimes. Next, we derive some key long run performance measures
associated with each of these two regimes. Finally, we discuss the implications
of our analysis for practical invasive species management.