Non-Linear Dynamics of Population and Natural Resources: The Emergence of Different Patterns of Development

This paper studies the long-term dynamics between the exploitation of natural re-sources and population growth. Brander and Taylor (1998) started a sequence of papers which sought to deduce from historical and archaeological studies some styl-ized links between ecological and economic systems. In this strand of literature all the services of the natural environment are aggregated in a ecological complex which is characterized by a simple logistic dynamics. Given such assumptions these models show a unique long-term steady state. The aim of this paper is to obtain a more general framework that could account for the heterogeneity of environmental development paths followed by past societies. Two new assumptions are introduced: i) the disaggregation of the ecological complex into two different resources; ii) ir-reversibility- namely, an inexorable tendency to exhaustion when the renewable resource stock is below a certain threshold. Analysis of the dynamic properties of the system shows a multiplicity of steady states which makes it possible to consider the effects of technical progress, cultural and climate changes on the resilience of the existing development path