Regionalising bioeconomy indicators through the integration of subnational and firm-level data

This article develops an approach for estimating employment and value added in bio-based activities for European Union NUTS-2 territorial units. This method integrates regional statistics with firm-level data to increase the granularity of regional economic information, thereby enabling a more accurate identification of bio-based activities. A case study of Italy reveals a heterogeneous territorial distribution of bio-based activities, as well as substantial differences in region-specific bio-based shares across manufacturing sectors not captured by conventional approaches. Overall, the proposed approach represents an improvement in the measurement of the regional bioeconomy, which is essential for policy evaluation and monitoring.