Welfare Effects of the National Pseudorabies Eradication Program

Abstract

A welfare methodology is adapted to evaluate market and distributional effects of a completed pseudorabies eradication effort in the U. S. The model predicts small market effects from pseudorabies eradication. Welfare analysis suggests that, in states generating relatively large hog numbers, producers will experience a net gain from eradication in all scenarios considered, yet in smaller hog producing areas individual hog operations may lose producer surplus. Consumer surplus changes vary by scenario but are always positive. In general, the national pseudorabies eradication program is shown to be economically efficient.

Public Policy and Private Incentives for Livestock Disease Control

“…The success of the Animal Health Board's e¡orts to motivate cost-e¡ective disease control depends critically on whether their new policies generate consistent rather than opposing incentives for individual livestock producers to control disease. Much of the previous literature on animal health economics, however, consists of ex post evaluations of national control schemes which o¡er limited insight into the potential behavioural responses of producers who raise livestock primarily for economic pro¢t (Dietrich et al 1987;Ebel et al 1992;Liu 1979). This article utilises recent advances in the dynamic bioeconomic literature to develop a behavioural model of livestock disease control.…”

Economic impacts of reduced milk production associated with papillomatous digital dermatitis in dairy cows in the USA

“…The assumptions of linear demand and supply curves and parallel supply shift are fairly common working assumptions among economists who study the economic impacts of animal diseases. For example, Ebel et al (1992) assumed linear demand and supply curves, and parallel supply shifts, to measure the change in producer surplus resulting from the National Pseudorabies Eradication Program. Forsythe & Corso (1994) subsequently identified an error in the analysis of Ebel et al (1992) and presented corrected estimates of welfare effects but still assumed linear demand and supply curves and a parallel shift in supply.…”

“…The present study exposes not only the economic impacts of a new disease (PDD) and a new set of risk factors, but also a new and unique situation with respect to the computation of the economic impacts of risk factors for an animal disease. A limitation of many prior economic-welfare analyses of animal diseases (e.g., Ebel et al 1992 ;Forsythe & Corso, 1994;Ott et al 1999) is that they completely ignored the uncertainty of their estimates. Piggott (2003) used a Monte-Carlo method to compute confidence intervals for estimated welfare effects (for producers) from Table 5.…”

The Economics of Quarantine and the SPS Agreement

“…276 Part III Adding more economics to risk analysis Economic welfare analysis is a standard tool that has been used widely for public policy analysis as well as the analysis of the impacts of various animal and plant health programs (Ebel et al 1992;Forsythe and Corso 1994;Forsythe and Evangelou 1993;Haley and Dixit 1988;Lichtenberg et al 1988;Miller et al 1994;Ott et al 1995;Roberts et al 1997).…”