1,721,015 research outputs found
Bioeconomy and Circular Economy: Implications for Economic Evaluation in the Post-COVID Era
Full text linkThe objective of this paper is to review selected insights about the current economic research on the Bioeconomy and circular economy, with a particular focus for the role of primary sector, and to derive implications for organisation, evaluation and valuation practice in the context of the post-COVID era. A framework for the analysis of optimal level of circularity and related economic and evaluation concepts is developed for this purpose. We highlight how higher focus on circularity will increase the complexity of market relationships, contributing to flexibility, but also to uncertainty. The paper argues that these issues will become more important in the post-COVID era, due to the plea for increasing Bioeconomy resilience. New organisational concepts and models are hence needed. Evaluation, on the other hand, will need to be embedded even more in the decision-making processes, in spite of the increasing uncertainty and difficulties in evaluation
The role of collaboration and entrepreneurship in strengthening the participation of primary producers in the bioeconomy
No full textThe political economy determinants of agri-environmental funds in the European Rural Development Programmes
Full text linkIn recent years, agricultural policies have expanded their scope to include funding for the promotion of environmental sustainability in agriculture. However, these policies have been often overlooked in the political economy literature. This article aims to investigate the factors influencing the allocation of funds towards environmental goals in the Rural Development Programmes of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy. The main findings of this study indicate a positive correlation between GDP per capita and the allocation of the environmental budget. Conversely, delegating the management of these programmes to sub-national polities has a negative impact on the budget allocation. Therefore, it seems that maintaining some central control over the budget allocation might favour the environmental sustainability of the agricultural sector
Technological innovations for biodiversity monitoring and the design of agri-environmental schemes
Full text linkImportance of different policy instruments in the introduction of sustainable innovation in fruit and vegetable value chains: The perception of coordinators of European research and innovation projects
Full text linkDoubly Robust DID for National Parks evaluation: “just” environmental benefits, or socioeconomics impacts as well?
No full textNational Parks (NPs) and protected areas are supposed to preserve the environment and prevent the loss of biodiversity. However, having substantially incremented worldwide, they now also include many areas that are important for economic development. Also, the literature on the subject has expanded, but targeting mainly the environmental benefits. This work investigates both the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the Italian NPs of the 90s, by applying at the municipality level a Doubly Robust Difference-In-Differences estimator combined with Propensity Score Matching. The results suggest a positive effect on the environment on both the municipalities in NPs and the neighbouring ones, both in the short (2001) and medium run (2011). There are also socioeconomic effects in terms of the increase of incoming work-commuters and the number of workers employed in the tourism sector establishments
Water harvesting reservoirs with internal water reallocation: A case study in Emilia Romagna, Italy
No full textThe existence of formal water markets in the European context is limited to the Spanish case, despite its rationale being deeply rooted in the economic literature. In Italy, formal water markets are widely criticized and they are not supported by the national legislation. However, due to some specificity, a form of water reallocation exists in a number of rainwater harvesting reservoirs in the North of Italy. The aims of the analysis are the description of such an institutional arrangement and the economic assessment of the reallocation mechanism, including the distribution of its gains. We formulate a semi-empirical mathematical programming model to study the outcomes of different institutional scenarios. The results suggest that the reallocation increases the gross margins of the area, and that the distribution of the gains are in favour of water buyers. Despite its inefficiencies, the institutional arrangement present in the area adds flexibility to a system that is likely to face major changes in the next decades
Supply of bioeconomy products
No full textThe main objective of this paper is to review key topics in production economics applied to the bioeconomy. First, we address the representation of harvesting of natural resources and illustrate the implications for their optimal use and sustainability. Second, we deal with the topic of increased separability in components of biomass and enlargement of options for products design, and discuss implications for supply and market organisation. We argue that in both cases further research is needed with a view at the new bioeconomy technologies and related organisational forms. Addressing the specificities of the bioeconomy through a practicable technology representation aimed at supporting economic conceptualisation is key for the “distinctivity” and usefulness of this field of research
Water Trading with Multiple Water Sources: A Case Study in the Reno Basin, Italy
No full textIn this paper, we focus on the implication of the heterogeneity of water sources on the functioning of potential formal water markets. Hence, we investigate how the attribution of water rights in an area where water sources are heterogeneous affects water trading flows. To investigate the issue, we develop a mathematical programming model which is applied to the Reno Basin area, located in the north of Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region, where farms are either connected to groundwater, or surface water. In the model, the different water sources are then characterised by a different structure of the extraction cost. Moreover, we simulate the potential effect of involuntary cutbacks and local water scarcity that heterogeneously reduces water availability. The results indicate that the presence of different water sources might increase the scope for a potential water market in the area, and in case of high heterogeneity of water availability such an institution would soften the effects of seasonal drought
A Statistical Matching approach to reproduce the heterogeneity of willingness to pay in benefit transfer
Full text linkResearchers and policymakers seek a better understanding of the social demand for agri-environmental public goods (PGs), that, being nonmarket goods, are usually valuated by means of stated preference methods by eliciting people's willingness to pay (WTP). In actual policy design, benefit transfer (BT) is often preferred to novel surveys which are expensive and time demanding. Common BT approaches are value and function transfer that can provide good estimates of the mean WTP but disregard the heterogeneity of the individuals' preferences. The WTP distribution is thus flattened, leading to a misrepresentation of the PG demand. The objective of this paper is to improve BT in its ability to reproduce the actual WTP distribution at the policy site by means of the non-parametric micro Statistical Matching. We use this novel approach to transfer individual WTP values for soil erosion and carbon sequestration elicited by contingent valuation on people living in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Comparing the results with the ones of value and function transfers, our approach outperforms the others, reflecting the actual WTP distribution and lowering the benefit transfer errors. In this way, BT can better support policymakers in designing new agri-environmental policy instruments, more targeted towards specific demand segments and hence with higher cost-effectiveness
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