Technical Abstract: Invasive insect species represent a significant economic risk to both the financial viability of agricultural producers and to the sustainability of U.S. agriculture more generally. With the rapid growth of international trade in agricultural commodities of all types, agricultural systems in the U.S. are under constant threat that new species will be introduced, spread and thrive in an environment lacking natural predators. The objective of this study is to investigate whether taxes or permits is preferred for the control of spatial-temporal externalities that arise in the management of invasive insect species. We apply our model to a specific insect – Bemisia tabaci, in Arizona. Welfare outcomes are compared under scenarios of only privately-optimal insect control, private control with taxes, and private control with permits relative to a socially-optimal benchmark. Under realistic parameter assumptions we find that a system of permits is preferred to a system of taxes. Moreover, we show that a steeper marginal social damage function favors the use of taxes, while a steeper control-cost function favors permits, which is likely to be more politically-acceptable than a tax-based systems