Public and private roles in plant health management

World-wide, government institutions play an important role in the management of plant health. This paper develops a conceptual framework in which suppliers and demanders jointly determine the optimal level of plant health in a hypothetical market. Next this paper argues that this market falls short of reaching an optimal plant health situation due to the public good nature of plant health and due to the presence of asymmetric information. A range of commonly applied and novel solutions to this market failure are then discussed.