Evaluation of bioeconomy status in Visegrad countries: A comparative benchmarking

Bioeconomy and eco-innovation are becoming significant in discussions of sustainability; nevertheless, assessing the performance of the bioeconomy remains challenging. The objective of this study is to examine the bioeconomy and eco-innovation landscapes of the Visegrad Group countries and to juxtapose them with several EU countries at varying stages of bioeconomic advancement. Transaction matrices have been derived from symmetric input–output tables to ascertain the monetary magnitude of the bioeconomy sectors, followed by data envelopment analysis, which uses an output-oriented slack-based measure that considers undesirable outputs (greenhouse gas emissions) and variable returns to scale to evaluate national performance. The results indicate persistent structural deficiencies in eco-innovation; yet the V4 countries do not consistently lag behind other economies. Methodologically, incorporating emissions shifts benchmarking from solely economic to environmental efficiency. The resulting analysis thus provides a practical basis for sectoral and regional policy, including the identification of technological shortcomings and the establishment of investment priorities.