Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims at collecting economic studies about the wide range of public goods (and bads) provided by agriculture and forestry. The focus is on valuation and on the design of policy-, market- and other coordination and governance mechanisms for a smart provision of public goods. Contributions are sought with a focus on emerging issues, such as:

1. a) renewed interpretation of public goods and their understanding and conceptualization, especially in relation to new concerns such as climate change, ethical issues, etc., and with a view at the interface between economics and communication sciences;
2. b) valuation of public goods and their provision, with special reference to new operational developments, empirical evidence about public goods values, innovative valuation methods and policy relevance of valuation exercises in a context of evidence-based policy making;
3. c) evaluation of optimized policies and mechanisms for provision of public goods and the avoidance of public bads; most innovative mechanisms are especially targeted, such as results-based approaches, collective instruments, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), multi-actor solutions, competitive auction mechanisms, multi-actor approaches to green innovation, as well as connection with agriculture and food chain integration; this does not exclude new analyses of well-established instruments in changing climate and market contexts;
4. d) institutional solutions for co-design and participatory approaches, including conceptual and procedural issues in stakeholder participation in co-design processes;
5. e) links with spatial planning and management, regulatory contexts, as well as with innovative information sources.

Both theoretical and empirical studies are expected. Reference to practical policy problems and measures, such as components of the Common Agricultural Policy or of the Water Framework Directive in Europe (or analogous policy framework in other Worlds regions), is especially encouraged, as well as the study of the connection between policy instruments design and context variables, such as price variability, climate change, availability of new technologies, etc.

Prof. Davide Viaggi
Dr. Macario Rodríguez-Entrena
Dr. Lena Schaller
Dr. Stefano Targetti
Dr. Zavalloni Matteo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Public goods
• agri-environmental schemes
• valuation
• policy design
• (governance) mechanisms