Evolution of population-resource dynamics models

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Brander and Taylor's (1998) model and its descendants from the following perspectives: population growth, substitutability, innovation, capital accumulation, property rights and institutional designs, and modeling approach. This survey aims to contribute to a better understanding of population and resource dynamics models in general and facilitate further application of the model framework to relevant circumstances. Although often treated as exogenous in optimal growth models, making population growth an endogenous function allows us to analyze broader effects of economic activities on population. The issues of substitutability, innovation and capital accumulation are intertwined; allowing a model to address the effect of an endogenous technological change on substitutability between natural and man-made capital facilitates our analyses of sustainability issues. To address internalizing inter-generational externalities in resource use, incorporating property right changes and institutional designs to this type of model is a useful exercise, but careful attention is needed for the consistency between such an arrangement and the mathematical representation of the depicted economy. Finally, although the common criticism regarding convenient mathematical assumptions applies to the existing BT-type models, the use of computer simulation can relax such assumptions, to better represent the intended relationships between the relevant variables. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.