Policy assessment from an institutional perspective follows the concept of institutions for sustainability, which is defined as the necessary institutional structure capable of delivering economic, social, and environmental sustainability objectives. Thus, the effectiveness of a policy and the cost-effectiveness of its implementation depend to a large extent on the degree of compatibility between this policy option and the respective institutional context. However, not least because institutions usually relate to a great diversity of situations, the state-of-theart in institutional economics offers hardly any standardized procedures for institutional analysis that can easily be combined with environmental and agricultural models widely used for policy impact assessment. To assess the compatibility between policy options and various institutional contexts a standardized methodology has been developed within the SEAMLESS-Integrated Project that provides for an institutional dimension in modelling: the Procedure for Institutional Compatibility Assessment' (PICA).