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

DOI: 10.13128/BAE-20479
Bio-based and Applied Economics 5(2): 213, 2016

It is with great honor that I have taken the position of Chief Editor for Bio-based and 
Applied Economics.

In only five years since its foundation BAE, the official journal of the Italian Associa-
tion of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), has regularly published three issues 
per year and has been indexed in several bibliographic databases, including the Emerging 
Sources Citation Index (ESCI) of Web of Science and the  Scopus database. I wish to take 
this opportunity to acknowledge the great job made by the previous Chief Editor, Davide 
Viaggi, and his enthusiasm and dedication to the Journal. Many thanks also to the previ-
ous team of Associate Editors for their contribution in establishing the current standard of 
BAE, and particularly to Alessandro Corsi and Gianluca Stefani, who left the Board.

According to its focus and scope, BAE provides a forum for presentation and discus-
sion of applied research in the field of bio-based sectors and related policies, informing 
evidence-based decision-making and policy-making. In his Farewell Editorial, Davide 
Viaggi stressed a number of challenges, relating to the fact that “bioeconomy econom-
ics and policy is still far from being a well-established discipline”; he also concluded that 
“the economics of the bioeconomy needs most likely to develop not as an independent 
research area, but rather in close connection with the more traditional areas of agriculture 
and food economics”.

Since the beginning, BAE has been pursuing this scope, welcoming contributions 
from several fields and disciplines, such as resource and environmental economics, con-
sumer studies, regional economics, innovation and development economics, production 
economics, stimulating cross-fertilization among research fields, pointing-out connections 
and driving towards a tentative definition of a research field for the bioeconomy. Much 
more needs to be done, and I will work to maintain and consolidate this peculiar role of 
BAE, in shaping a new research area.

The new team of Associate Editors is highly qualified to this scope: Pavel Ciaian, Ro- 
berto Esposti and Simone Severini have joined Ornella Wanda Maietta and Francesco 
Mantino. I am truly confident that with their help and expertise in different research 
fields, and the support and contribution of the staff from Firenze University Press, we will 
be able to steadily increase the high quality standard of our published articles and even 
aim to further achievements and diffusion among scholars. 

Daniele Moro