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Abstract
The global push toward free trade and the consequent rise in volume of imports
from a wider range of countries incurs the likelihood of introducing unwanted
pathogens. Given that a zero-risk quarantine policy is not possible, there are
tradeoffs between the gains from international trade and the potential costs to
society of disease incursions. The aim in this paper is to demonstrate a means
for choosing among alternative import protocols through an economic model.
The economic modeling approach applied to a stylised set of import protocols
was a two step process. First, the gains and losses to consumers and producers,
including costs of disease, were estimated for each import protocol. In the
second step, three decision rules — minimax, minimin and minimax regret —
were applied to a cost matrix to determine the most efficient import protocol.