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Abstract:The purpose of this study is to review theoretical and empirical findings in economics with respect to the challenging question of how to manage invasive species. The review revealed a relatively large body of literature on the assessment of damage costs of invasive species; single species and groups of species at different geographical scales. However, the estimated damage costs show large variation, from less than 1 million USD to costs corresponding to 12% of gross domestic product, depending on the methods employed, geographical scale, and scope with respect to inclusion of different species. Decisions regarding optimal management strategies, when to act in the invasion chain and which policy to choose, have received much less attention in earlier years, but have been subject to increasing research during the last decade. More difficult, but also more relevant policy issues have been raised, which concern the targeting in time and space of strategies under conditions of uncertainty. In particular, the weighting of costs and benefits from early detection and mitigation against the uncertain avoidance of damage with later control, when the precision in targeting species is typically greater is identified as a key challenge. The role of improved monitoring for detecting species and their spread and damage has been emphasized, but questions remain on how to achieve this in practice. This is in contrast to the relatively large body of literature on policies for mitigating dispersal by trade, which is regarded as one of the most important vectors for the spread of invasive species. On the other hand, the literature on how to mitigate established species, by control or adaptation, is much more scant. Studies evaluating causes for success or failure of policies against invasive in practice are in principal non-existing. OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2014, 6 501

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the factors accounting for inflation dynamics in Ghana using the bounds test and other econometric approaches. We find that real output, nominal exchange rate, broad money supply, nominal interest rate and fiscal deficit play a dominant role in the inflationary process in Ghana. To the extent that output growth by far has the strongest impact on inflation, targeting supply‐side constraints will help moderate price inflation. The paper concludes that inflation in Ghana is explained by a combination of structural and monetary factors consistent with prior studies.

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This paper investigates the role of social capital in influencing individuals' willingness to contribute to environmental protection in Sweden. Four indices of social capital comprising social trust, institutional trust, civic participation and a composite index comprising all considered elements of social capital were constructed to analyse their respective association with individual decisions to contribute. Using data from the environment module of the 2010 International Social Survey Programme, we empirically show that all four social capital parameters are significant and robust drivers of Swedish public's willingness to contribute when the payment vehicles are increased higher prices or taxes or through lifestyle changes to protect the environment. Statistically, a significant association was observed for social trust and civic participation. Institutional trust is not significant when the payment vehicle is a reduction in the standard of living. Overall, however, the composite index of social capital is a robust predictor of likelihood to contribute irrespective of the payment vehicle.

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Many studies on the link between climate variability and infectious diseases are based on biophysical experiments, do not account for socio-economic factors and with little focus on developed countries. This study examines the effect of climate variability and socio-economic variables on infectious diseases using data from all 21 Swedish counties. Employing static and dynamic modelling frameworks, we observe that temperature has a linear negative effect on the number of patients. The relationship between winter temperature and the number of patients is non-linear and “U” shaped in the static model. Conversely, a positive effect of precipitation on the number of patients is found, with modest heterogeneity in the effect of climate variables on the number of patients across disease classifications observed. The effect of education and number of health personnel explain the number of patients in a similar direction (negative), while population density and immigration drive up reported cases. Income explains this phenomenon non-linearly. In the dynamic setting, we found significant persistence in the number of infectious and parasitic-diseased patients, with temperature and income observed as the only significant drivers.