Spruce budworm and oil price: a biophysical analogy

The behavior of complex systems is one of the most intriguing phenomena investigated by recent science; natural and artificial systems offer a wide opportunity for this kind of analysis. The energy conversion is both a process based on important physical laws and one of the most important economic sectors; the interaction between these two aspects of energy production suggests the possibility to apply some of the approaches of the dynamic systems' analysis. In particular, a phase plot, which is one of the methods to detect a correlation between quantities in a complex system, provides a good way to establish qualitative analogies between the ecological systems and the economic ones and may shed light on the processes governing the evolution of the system. The aim of this paper is to highlight the analogies between some peculiar characteristics of the oil production vs. price and show in which way such characteristics are similar to some behavioral mechanisms found in Nature.