Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses in pest management

Abstract

Economics is the study of how people allocate scarce resources among competing needs. It is applicable to pest control because managers must often make difficult choices about how to allocate a limited budget among many possible control programmes. Therefore, pest managers are required to make economic decisions, and pest management is not an exclusively biological problem. Economics offers a structured theoretical framework within which pest management issues can be critically examined, and offers quantitative tools to decision-makers faced with complex choices.Economic theory suggests that individual selfinterested land owners are unlikely to provide pest management services at a level acceptable to the community. This line of analysis provides a justification for active Government involvement in the provision of pest management services. Quantitative tools developed by applied economists assist with the identification of socially desirable public policies, and suggest profitable areas of future research. © 1993 The Royal Society of New Zealand.