Gaetano Martino

The paper aims at analyzing organizational issues in the supply of safe food. The relationship between organizational form and level of safety does not seem, satisfactorily or systematically, to have attracted researchers’ attention. The study of the influence of the characteristics of safe food is here developed within the theoretical framework provided by Transaction Costs Economics. Behavioural uncertainty and asset specificity are taken into account in order to analyze the influence of the characteristics of food on the choice of the structure of governance. The paper proposes the idea the hybrid forms are efficiently chosen by agents and preliminary empirical evidence is provided. The study thus provides necessary premises to develop the analysis both of liability and competition within complex relationships along supply chain.