Economics of alien invasive species management : choices of targets and policies

The purpose of this paper is to present the economic analysis and research on invasive species management, which implies, in principle, a focus on two main questions: (i) how to set targets for species damage mitigation? and (ii) which policy instruments are best in achieving the target(s)?The results indicated that a majority of the studies recognize the need for addressing the links between economic and ecological systems and accounting for the uncertainty associated with predicting damages from invasive species.A common result is that strategies for prevention, control and damage reduction are complementary, and neglect of any of them may lead to unnecessary large social costs.Furthermore, unless economy-wide adjustments are accounted for when designing tariffs on imports, counteractive results may occur where the risk of invasive species damage increases.However, due to insufficient availability of data on the environmental impacts of alien invasive species, there is a lack of empirical applications.