Bioeconometrics: Empirical Modeling of Bioeconomic Systems

The rise of ecosystem management as an approach to renewable resource policy increases the demand for empirical bioeconomics. This paper provides a working definition of bioeconometrics and a taxonomy of model types. A bioeconometric model is a structural model that econometrically estimates one or more parameters of a bioeconomic system. Bioeconometric model types include equilibrium, dynamically decoupled, and dynamically coupled. The challenges and importance of bioeconometrics are illustrated with a Monte Carlo analysis of simulated data that attempts to differentiate among six different qualitative categories in a system characterized by critical depensation. The analysis highlights a theme in nonlinear dynamics—that a small quantitative change in a parameter can affect the qualitative dynamics—and shows that the econometrician may know the least empirically about a bioeconomic system when she needs to know the most.Bioeconomics, ecosystem management, open access, coupled systems, econometrics, nonlinear dynamics, bifurcation, natural resource management, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q22, C15,