Structural Patterns of the Bioeconomy in the EU Member States – a SAM approach

The concept of 'bioeconomy' is gathering momentum in European Union (EU) policy circles as a sustainable model of growth to reconcile the goals of continued wealth generation and employment with bio-based sustainable resource usage. Unfortunately, an economy-wide quantitative assessment covering the full diversity of this sector is, hitherto, constrained by relatively poor data availability for disaggregated bio-based activities. This research takes a first step in addressing this issue by employing social accounting matrices (SAMs) for each EU27 member encompassing a highly disaggregated treatment of traditional bio-based agricultural and food sectors, in addition to identifiable bioeconomic activities from the national accounts data. Employing backward-linkage (BL), forward-linkage (FL) and employment multipliers, the aim is to profile and assess comparative structural patterns both across bioeconomic sectors and EU Member States. The results indicate six clusters of EU member countries with homogeneous bioeconomy structures. Within cluster statistical tests reveal a high tendency toward 'backward orientation' or demand driven wealth generation, whilst inter-cluster statistical comparisons across each bio-based sector show only a moderate degree of heterogeneous BL wealth generation and, with the exception of only two sectors, a uniformly homogeneous degree of FL wealth generation. With the exception of forestry, fishing and wood activities, bio-based employment generation prospects are below non bioeconomy activities. Finally, milk and dairy are established as 'key sectors'.