Infectious livestock disease creates externalities for proximate animal production enterprises. The distribution of production scale within a region should influence and be influenced by these disease externalities. Taking the distribution of the unit costs of stocking an animal as primitive, we show that an increase in the variance of these unit costs reduces consumer surplus. The effect on producer surplus, total surplus, and animal concentration across feedlots depends on the demand elasticity. A subsidy to smaller herds can reduce social welfare and immiserize the farm sector by increasing the extent of disease. While Nash behavior involves excessive stocking, disease effects can be such that aggregate output declines relative to first-best. Disease externalities can induce more adoption of a cost-reducing technology by larger herds so that animals become more concentrated across herds. For strategic reasons, excess overall adoption of the innovation may occur. Larger herds are also more likely to adopt biosecurity innovations, explaining why larger herds may be less diseased in equilibrium.
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Paper provided by Iowa State University, Department of Economics in its series Staff General Research Papers with number
12676.
Length: Date of creation: 08 Sep 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:isu:genres:12676
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Geoffard, Pierre-Yves & Philipson, Tomas, 1996.
"Rational Epidemics and Their Public Control,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(3), pages 603-24, August.
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