Cooperative Management of Invasive Species: A Dynamic Nash Bargaining Approach

We use a Nash bargaining framework to examine scope for bargaining in invasive species problems where spread depends on the employment of costly controls. Municipalities bargain over a transfer payment that slows spread but requires an infested municipality to forgo nonmarket benefits from the host species. We find that when the uninfested municipality has a relative bargaining power advantage, bargaining may attain the first-best solution. However, in many cases a short-term bargaining agreement is unlikely to succeed, which suggests a role for higher levels of government to facilitate long-term agreements even when the details are left to municipalities to negotiate.