Bio-based and Applied Economics 5(3): 215-216, 2016

ISSN 2280-6180 (print) © Firenze University Press 
ISSN 2280-6172 (online) www.fupress.com/bae

DOI: 10.13128/BAE-20512

The changing role of regulation in the bio-based economy: 
an introduction

Regulation has been broadly defined as a sustained and focused control exercised by a 
public agency over activities that are valued by a community. As such it has been a major 
concern of policymakers in a range of fields from financial to industrial and agricultural 
activities. Examples of regulatory areas in the bio-based economy are risk, health, environ-
ment, competition, intellectual property rights. Regulations in all these areas have deep 
implications for trade issues, global value chains and for the provision of public goods.

For most of the twentieth century, regulation has been considered the primary 
instrument to deal with market failures and market imperfections in western economies 
and a number of new regulatory agencies have been created. Starting from the 90s, how-
ever, as the private and public costs of regulation have become more apparent, an effort 
has been devoted to the reduction of the cost of regulation and toward deregulation.  As 
an example, the Better Regulation agenda adopted by the European Commission in 2015 
has been designed to improve regulation across EU countries with the final objective of 
reducing its cost.

In the EU, regulations concerning food retailing, food processing, farming activities, 
tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade as well as financial markets have deeply affected the 
bio-based sectors. The objective of these regulations is guaranteeing food security and 
food safety to final consumers and a sustainable management of natural resources such 
as land, water and the rural environment. There is no doubt that, in these areas, the role 
of EU policies has increased dramatically and questions have been raised on the effec-
tiveness, efficiency and equity of such regulations. In recent years, firms working in agri-
cultural and food production, bioenergy and biotechnology have often protested against 
the supposed “invasive” role of EU regulations in their activities. How a viable balance 
between regulation and deregulation ought to be attained is both a political and a scien-
tific question. 

The aim of the fifth AIEAA Conference, held in Bologna, June 16-17, 2016, has been 
to provide a scientific contribution to these issues by expanding the knowledge base on 
the fundamentals of better regulation, by promoting a critical debate on the underlying 
theoretical and methodological issues and by analysing the main policy implications. The 
Conference Programme included around 50 papers addressing issues such as cost-benefit 
analysis of regulation, design of enforcement rules, nudge approaches to consumer regu-
lation, political economy of regulation, intellectual property rights, regulation of quality 
standards and global value chains, innovation in methods and tools for regulatory impact 
analysis. The BAE Editor invited some of the speakers to submit their papers for publica-
tion on this BAE issue. The papers published in this issue have gone through a regular 
review process and are a selection of the topics covered in the Conference.



216 Paolo Sckokai

The paper by Stephane Marette analyses the relationships between quality, market 
mechanisms and regulations in the food chain, emphasizing the relationships between 
quality and sustainability. Through a partial equilibrium model and a simulation concern-
ing the use of linseed for feeding dairy cows, the paper concludes that instruments like 
minimum quality standards and labelling may have a positive impact on consumer surplus 
and on producer profits. Through a structured literature review, Alessandro Olper explores 
the political economy issues of trade-related regulatory policies, with a special focus on 
non-tariff measures (NTMs), such as environmental and food standards. Focusing on both 
theory and existing empirical evidence, the paper analyses the role of global value chains 
as driver of the potential impact of policies. Francesca Galli and co-authors analyse a case 
study of food assistance schemes in Tuscany: adopting a participatory approach, they 
examine pathways for strengthening the impact of food assistance schemes in periods of 
economic crisis. The paper by Michele Vollaro and co-authors addresses the issue of the 
increasing demand of phosphorus (P) worldwide and the stability of the fertilizer market. 
Based on a circular economy theoretical framework, the paper proposes an impact analysis 
of the use of recycled P as a substitute of chemical P fertilizers, proving its potential eco-
nomic sustainability. Finally, Giovanni Tagliabue proposes a political economy analysis of 
the EU GMO maize policy, concluding that the Schumpeterian approach adopted by politi-
cians may lead to policy choices totally disconnected by science-based evidences.

Paolo Sckokai
President of AIEAA