Exploring the regional implications of interstate quarantine policies in Western Australia

As a signatory of the World Trade Organization Agreement, Australia has a responsibility to ensure the behaviour of its internal markets for food and food-related products abide by the same rules and regulations as international trade. This has generated a need to demonstrate the validity of any measures that restrict competition to avoid disputes and/or retaliatory actions by other signatories. This paper explores a spatial economic evaluation technique that can be used to examine the welfare implications of quarantine policies for regionalised industries, and demonstrates practical application of this technique using two case studies of interstate trade within Australia.