Take a risk: Preferring prevention over control of biological invaders

Scientists have argued that invasive species can be managed most cost effectively with greater investments in prevention. Further, under ideas like the precautionary principle it is reasonable to expect that a cautious manager would use more prevention relative to control because it keeps more invaders out. Yet, this is not typically done. In many cases, private and public resources are invested primarily to control existing invaders rather than to prevent new invasions. Managers frequently wait until after invaders have arrived and then scramble to limit the damages. We believe these paradoxical decisions can be understood by recognizing the link between typical human preferences for risk bearing and the technology of risk reduction. We demonstrate quantitatively how managers perceived to be cautious or averse to risk tend to shy away from prevention relative to control. This counterintuitive result arises because control is a safer choice than prevention because its productivity is relatively less risky: it works to remove existing invaders from the system. In contrast, the productivity of prevention is more uncertain because prevention only reduces the chance of invasion, it does not eliminate it, and invasion may not occur even in the absence of prevention. Managers' averse to risk will inherently avoid as much uncertainty as possible, whether the source of uncertainty regards ecological outcomes or economic productivity. Implications for environmental decision making are clear. In invasive species management, if managers act as though they are risk averse, their caution can backfire when it leads to more control rather than prevention. The social consequences of this choice are a greater probability of future invasions and lower social welfare. Our results suggest that social welfare is highest when managers were willing to “take a risk” with prevention.     

East Asia's growth: technology or accumulation?

Krugman, building on the work of Alwyn Young, has argued that hypergrowth in East Asia derives mostly from factor accumulation, owing little to technological change. Yet this explanation is at odds with what analysts of technological change have to say about technology acquisition in these countries. This article examines the Young-Krugman thesis and argues that the problem lies in the misconception of technological change as distinct from accumulation. The critique is taken further by means of a review of the multifaceted way that technology raises the productivity of labor. It is argued that technology is carried not as disembodied knowledge, but as techniques hard-coded in physical devices and structures, by patterns soft-coded in human and organizational capabilities and business-friendly institutions, formal and informal. These operate as symbiotic complements, not separable substitutes as assumed in conventional theory. These arguments are supplemented by perspectives introduced from the technology literature. Since the respective roles and relationship between accumulation and technology are scrutinized, the analysis provides important policy conclusions on the value of East Asian growth strategies.     

Stepping Stones for Biological Invasion: A Bioeconomic Model of Transferable Risk

We investigate three sources of bias in valuation methods for ecosystem risk: failure to consider substitution possibilities between goods, failure to consider nonseparability of ecosystem services with market goods, and failure to consider substitution possibilities between ecosystems. The first two biases are known in the literature, and we offer insight on the size of the bias for a specific example. Our work on spatially transferable risk is novel. We develop the concept and show how it may undermine typical invasion prevention strategies. We find three key results. First, partial equilibrium estimates of welfare loss are significantly overestimated relative to general equilibrium estimates. If ecosystem services and market goods are substitutes the partial equilibrium bias is greater than if they are compliments. Second, well-intended policies do not necessarily reduce overall risk; risk reduction actions can transfer risk to another time or location, or both, which may increase total risk. Third, policies of quotas and inspections have to be extreme to improve welfare, with inspections having advantages over quotas.     

High-quality regulation: its popularity,its tools and its future

This article examines the impact of devolution, the New Public Management and public management culture on accounting for democratic accountability in the first term of the devolved national assemblies and parliament in the UK. Although there is more openness, transparency, consultation and scrutiny with regard to budgets, accounts and performance as a result of devolution, there is extensive information overload. Thus, many politicians are highly dependent on the parliamentary division of labour and are reliant on experts and advisors functioning as buffers and filters of accounting information.     

The connection between ethics and ideology

Prof. Lodge explores the use of ideology as a concept to understand ethical issues. He observes an ideological transition occurring in the United States, one that has been under way for some 80 years from what he refers to as Individualism to Communitarianism. Many ethical questions depend for an answer on which ideology is dominant or which is appropriate. George Cabot Lodge, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, is well known as both a scholar and a statesman. He served in the Eisenhower Administration as Director of Information for the United States Department of Labor (1954–58) and Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs (1958–61). Lodge is a member of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Peace Foundation, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. He is the author of Spearheads of Democracy (1962), Engine of Change: United States Interests and Revolution in Latin America (1970) and The New American Ideology (1975).This paper was written in March 1977 for the Conference on Business Ethics at Bentley College, Boston, Mass. In spite of indications to the contrary, the author believes that it is as valid in 1982 as it was in 1977.