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Optimal Control of Locusts in Subsistence Farming Areas

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posted on 2024-11-18, 15:54 authored by Amnon Levy, M R Caputo
Locust swarms hit subsistence-staple-crop-growing households at random and are not privately controllable. An aerial-spraying optimal control model that supports the said households’ liveli-hood at least expected cost is therefore developed. The qualitative properties of the model are analysed under economically plausible but mild assumptions. The steady state comparative stat-ics reveal that the locust swarm size and the probability of a household’s crop being destroyed by a swarm decrease with the number of households, yield per household, and the staple crop’s replacement price, and increase with the marginal cost of spraying and the planner’s discount rate. A local comparative dynamics analysis is also conducted, as it provides the necessary eco-nomic intuition behind other ostensibly anomalous steady state comparative statics results.

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Citation

Levy, A and Caputo, MR, Optimal Control of Locusts in Subsistence Farming Areas, Working Paper 07-10, Department of Economics, University of Wollongong, 2007.

Language

English

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