Essays on the economics of livestock disease management: On -farm biosecurity adoption, asymmetric information in policy design, and decentralized bioeconomic dynamics

Livestock disease management involves both private and public resources and takes place in an environment of uncertainty. An econometric procedure to estimate disease control functions that will inform herd-level decision making is proposed and demonstrated to shed light on the determinants of health management practice adoption. An incentive compatible, government provided indemnity for private livestock assets culled in response to an outbreak of contagious disease when the government is constrained by hidden action and hidden information is characterized and compared with status quo indemnities. A bioeconomic model with feedbacks between disease and behavioral strategies is constructed to evaluate the nature of strategic effects between private decision makers in a decentralized setting when government policies are a source of externalities.