Rebecca Epanchin-Niell - Resources for the Future
Risk-based Inspection to Minimize Invasive Pest Introduction from International Live Plant Trade
Date: 11/12/2015 (Thu)
Time: 3:15pm- 4:45pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Building 09/CR 137, RTI International
Organizer: Steven Sexton
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
9:00am - Marty Smith (Environment Hall 4116)
11:00am - Rob Fetter (EH 4th floor or can move if useful)
3:15pm - Seminar Presentation (3:15pm to 4:45pm)
Additional Comments: Allocating inspection resources over a diverse set of imports to prevent entry of plant pests and pathogens presents a substantial policy design challenge. We model inspections of live plant imports and producer responses to inspections using a "state-dependent" monitoring and enforcement model. We capture exporter abatement response to a set of feasible inspection policies from the regulator. Conditional on this behavioral response, we solve the regulator's problem of selecting the parameters for the state-dependent monitoring regime to minimize entry of infested shipment. We account for exporter heterogeneity, fixed penalties for noncompliance, imperfect abatement control and imperfect inspections at the border. Overall, we estimate that state-dependent targeting (based on historical interceptions) cuts the rate of infested shipments that are accepted by one-fifth, relative to the status quo of uniformly allocated inspections.