IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaae07/52218.html

Designing Regional Systems of Biotechnology Regulation A Transaction Cost Approach to Regulatory Governance

Author

Listed:
  • Birner, Regina
  • Linacre, Nicholas A.

Abstract

Many developing countries are currently in the process of designing regulatory systems that should make it possible to use the potential of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for agricultural development, while at the same time managing the risks for food safety and the environment that are potentially associated with these technologies. In view of the considerable costs associated with biotechnology regulation and the scarcity of biosafety specialists, there are processes in various regions of the developing world to establish regional systems of biotechnology regulation. So far, there are major knowledge gaps as to how regional systems of biotechnology regulation can be designed to be effective and efficient and to fulfill principles of good governance, such as transparency, voice and accountability, control of corruption, and avoidance of special interest capture. There is a wide variety of possible regional approaches, which differ with regard to the level of centralization, the scope of a regional system, the types of regional institutions and processes, and the types of financing mechanisms. Based on the literature on environmental and fiscal federalism and transaction costs economics, the paper develops a conceptual framework for the assessment of regional systems of biotechnology regulation. The framework specifies design options and assessment criteria, and identifies major trade-offs as well as the factors affecting these trade-offs. The paper takes West Africa as an example to illustrate this framework and refers to the European Union for comparison. The paper concludes that involving regional experts, stakeholders and policy-makers into debates on the design of a regional regulatory system is an important strategy to fill knowledge gaps and arrive at conclusions regarding the trade-offs involved in regional biotechnology regulation. Key words: regional biotechnology regulation; regulatory federalism; transaction cost economics; West Africa; European Union

Suggested Citation

  • Birner, Regina & Linacre, Nicholas A., 2008. "Designing Regional Systems of Biotechnology Regulation A Transaction Cost Approach to Regulatory Governance," 2007 Second International Conference, August 20-22, 2007, Accra, Ghana 52218, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaae07:52218
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.52218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/52218/files/Birner.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.52218?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "A Reconsideration of Environmental Federalism," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 7, pages 125-156, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Archon Fung & Erik Olin Wright, 2001. "Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance," Politics & Society, , vol. 29(1), pages 5-41, March.
    3. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    4. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    5. Regina Birner & Heidi Wittmer, 2004. "On the ‘Efficient Boundaries of the State’: The Contribution of Transaction-Costs Economics to the Analysis of Decentralization and Devolution in Natural Resource Management," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 22(5), pages 667-685, October.
    6. Wellisch,Dietmar, 2000. "Theory of Public Finance in a Federal State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521630351, January.
    7. Shelanski, Howard A & Klein, Peter G, 1995. "Empirical Research in Transaction Cost Economics: A Review and Assessment," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 335-361, October.
    8. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753, January.
    9. Pritchett, Lant & Woolcock, Michael, 2004. "Solutions When the Solution is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 191-212, February.
    10. Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3284, August.
    11. Stefan Voigt & Eli M. Salzberger, 2002. "Choosing Not To Choose: When Politicians Choose To Delegate Powers," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 289-310, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Birner, Regina & Linacre, Nicholas A., 2008. "Regional biotechnology regulations: Design options and implications for good governance," IFPRI discussion papers 753, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "The Political Economy of Environmental Policy," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 1, pages 3-30, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Kamanda, Josey & Birner, Regina & Bantilan, Cynthia, 2017. "The “efficient boundaries” of international agricultural research: A conceptual framework with empirical illustrations," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 78-85.
    4. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, March.
    5. William Keech & Michael Munger, 2015. "Erratum to: The anatomy of government failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 43-44, July.
    6. Erdogdu, Erkan, 2013. "Essays on Electricity Market Reforms: A Cross-Country Applied Approach," MPRA Paper 47139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. J.A. den Hertog, 2010. "Review of economic theories of regulation," Working Papers 10-18, Utrecht School of Economics.
    8. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    9. Mark Pingle, 2022. "Addressing threats like Covid: why we will tend to over-react and how we can do better," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 21(1), pages 9-23, June.
    10. McCann, Laura, 2013. "Transaction costs and environmental policy design," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 253-262.
    11. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    12. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Levine, Ross, 2006. "Bank supervision and corruption in lending," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 2131-2163, November.
    13. Sophie Harnay, 2023. "Richard A. Posner: From Public Choice Theory to Economic Analysis of Law (1969-1973)," Working Papers AFED 23-02, Association Francaise d'Economie du Droit (AFED).
    14. Edmund Malesky & Markus Taussig, 2019. "How Do Firms Feel About Participation by Their Peers in the Regulatory Design Process? An Online Survey Experiment Testing the Substantive Change and Spillover Mechanisms," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(2), pages 129-150, June.
    15. Kelly, Liam D. & Deaton, B. James, 2020. "Endogenous Institutional Change on First Nations Reserves: Selecting into the First Nations Land Management Act," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304294, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    16. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    17. Stephen Polasky & Holly Doremus & Bruce Rettig, 1997. "Endangered Species Conservation On Private Land," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 15(4), pages 66-76, October.
    18. Ana Lourenço, 2013. "In memoriam of Professor Ronald Coase," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 06, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    19. Hongqi Ma & Guangjun Shen & Jingxian Zou, 2024. "Does excess capacity strengthen firms' dependence on the polluting path? Evidence from Chinese iron and steel firms," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 971-1000, July.
    20. Buchen, Clemens, 2010. "Emerging economic systems in Central and Eastern Europe – a qualitative and quantitative assessment," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 37141.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaae07:52218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaaeaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.