An analysis of economic cost minimization and biological invasion damage control using the AWQ criterion

DeAngelo et al. (New approaches to the Economics of plant health. Springer, Heidelberg, 2006) have recently used the AWS criterion in a M/G/1 queuing model to show that there is no necessary tension between economic cost minimization and inspection stringency in non-native species management. In this paper, we use an alternate cost criterion (AWQ criterion) to investigate the generality of this central result in DeAngelo et al. (New approaches to the Economics of plant health. Springer, Heidelberg, 2006). Our theoretical analysis shows that there is no unambiguous answer to this question. Therefore, we use numerical methods and our numerical analysis leads to two findings. First, for many values of the model parameters that describe the strictness of inspections, there is a tension between cost minimization and inspection stringency. Second, for most values of the model parameter that depicts the volume of maritime trade handled by the seaport under consideration, there is no tension between cost minimization and inspection stringency.