Just, Richard E., Julian M. Alston, and David Zilberman, Editors. Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology: Economics and Policy.

Just, Richard E., Julian M. Alston, and David Zilberman, Editors. Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology: Economics and Policy. New York: Springer, 2006, 732 pp., $149.00.

The development of agricultural biotechnologies in the 1970s and the 1980s, and the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in the 1990s, ushered in an era of regulatory modifications, and in some cases the creation of new regulations, designed to address the controversies and concerns of the many parties impacted by the use of GM crop varieties at the farm level, within the food marketing channels and throughout the food system. One result of this was that the regulations themselves either caused or became issues of concern, and in many cases, of controversy. This large, 33 chapters, 730-page volume, the contents of which are based mainly on a three-day conference held in Arlington, Virginia in March, 2005, attempts to provide a foundation for further research on the economics of the regulation of agricultural biotechnology.

The volume is split into three parts plus an introductory chapter and concluding chapter. Part I is itself split into four sections. It deals with major issues associated with the regulation of agricultural biotechnology, including the consequences of regulation, the benefits of biotechnology and the issues of consumer acceptance. Part II, split into three sections, deals with such topics as the causes of regulations and their impacts, environmental risks and regulation, and imperfect competition. Part III is also split into three sections. This part looks at a number of different regulations in various countries, refuge policy and compliance, and various crop-specific issues in biotechnology regulation.

This is not a volume one would pick up and read from cover to cover (as this reviewer did) hoping to gain insight into the economics of regulation. The thirty-one papers cover a wide range of topics, many of them from very different perspectives on regulation, and it is not an easy task to bring them together. Fortunately, this task is made much easier by reading the introductory chapter in which the editors do a superb job of introducing the reader to the many facets of the economics of regulation. It is here one gets a sense of why the book is much more a "volume" as opposed to a narrative or a textbook. To understand the topic of regulating agricultural biotechnology, one needs to understand some of the background and status of the crops involved, the biotechnological trait(s) involved, and the background of the regulations involved. In addition to this, one then needs to understand the issues involved and the political economy of the many parties and interest groups who advocate them. Finally, one needs to understand that because there are few definitive answers, and because regulations exist (sometimes at cross purposes), are pervasive and do evolve, then evaluating the costs and benefits and distributional effects of the regulations that circumscribe agricultural biotechnology is a multifaceted and complicated affair. Regulations are messy!

The vast array of topics and issues associated with agricultural biotechnology almost ensures that trying to get a handle on the subject of the economics of regulation is a daunting task. As the authors state, economic theory suggests that an optimal approach to determining a regulatory process is to maximize expected net discounted social benefits. However, the costs and the benefits of a particular technology are not easy to estimate, or quantify--or even to determine. There is also the additional burden that many of the costs and benefits are associated with issues of risk and uncertainty. When the risks involve human and environmental health, the question arises as to the feasibility of allowing any adverse outcome at all. Then there are the distributional effects of the costs and benefits to consider. Is there an optimal way of distributing the costs and benefits of an agricultural biotechnology such that no one segment of the population is disadvantaged? Finally, there is the burden of recognizing the direct or existing alternative(s) against which the costs and benefits should be measured.

This volume is not a comprehensive manual on the economics of regulating agricultural biotechnology--and probably for good reason. The vast number of topics and issues associated with regulating agricultural biotechnology are far beyond the size limitations that one would need to address them all in any detail. In addition, this volume is somewhat curtailed in its scope because the authors chose to limit the number of papers included to those presented at the three-day conference. And although the papers are up to date as of 2005, very few of the papers are broad summaries of previous work. Finally, the editors carefully point out that little work has previously been done in the area of the economics of regulating agricultural biotechnologies. Therefore one could only expect that many of the papers were written with only a partial view of the scope of the economics of regulation. It is only when taken as a whole that one begins to get an appreciation of the vastness of the topic.

What this volume does do is bring together, in a reasonably well-organized format, a wide range of papers that, taken together, outlines a framework of the vast array of issues associated with the economics of regulation. Again, the problem is, how should these issues be brought together? Once again, the editors come to our rescue. In the concluding chapter the editors outline what they see as the essential elements of the challenges associated with regulating agricultural biotechnology, their dimensions, the costs and impacts of biotechnologies and the regulations that surround them, the role of risk and uncertainty, the political economy and the noncompetitive market behavior among other things, and the editors' perspectives of the future of agricultural biotechnology.

As with any volume of this nature, one might expect some criticism of the scope of the work. The many topics and issues associated with the economics of regulating agricultural biotechnology are covered in a necessarily uneven and disorganized manner. Some issues and topics may be addressed in three or four or more papers, whereas other issues and topics of equal importance may constitute a paragraph in one paper. Such is the nature of a first attempt to create a foundation for further research when the boundaries of the topic are not yet drawn. Rather than these minor criticisms, the editors of the volume are to be commended for their efforts in getting academics and others to focus on the issue of the economics of regulation. And this is what makes it the valuable contribution that it is.

One mild criticism of the concluding chapter is that some readers may have mixed feelings about the evenhandedness of the editors. For example, there is a sense that the editors are more favorably disposed toward agricultural biotechnology than they are impartial observers. There is also a sense that, in the opinion of the authors, there is too much regulation and not enough acumen and prudence and that much of the regulation is unbalanced by the political economy that determines what is regulated and how regulations are imposed and enforced. Offsetting this, however, are some very interesting contrasts between the positive and negative effects of intellectual property rights, large firm interests and imperfect competition, and economies of scope in regulation.

Some readers may be disappointed that the editors did not delve very deeply into the issues associated with why consumers and many markets reject agricultural biotechnology. On the other hand, they do address the question and conclude that some degree of skepticism should be attached to survey results where consumers are asked about preferences of certain traits or characteristics when they are not in fact in the market because retailers or food manufacturers have opted not to handle biotech crop products, or because government regulation has kept them out of the market.

Overall, what this volume is about is not so much the economics of regulation as about the issues and debates, the sources of conflict, and the controversies that characterize the regulations surrounding agricultural biotechnologies. It is an attempt to focus research and debate on the reasons for, and the impacts of, regulation in an economic setting that poses difficult questions about its costs and benefits and how they are distributed. And it is a plea to those interested to think about the broader costs and benefits of regulation, their distribution, and their quantification.

Leslie J. Butler

University of California, Davis