Decomposition analysis of bioresources: Implementing a competitive and sustainable bioeconomy strategy in the Baltic Sea Region

Bioeconomy development has become one of the new trends in policy design and research. This study looks at biotic resource extraction in the Baltic Sea region countries providing detailed country by country analyses of factors affecting changes in resource extraction. The study is based on the index decomposition analysis including factors related to bioeconomy strategies such as the population, share of people employed in bioeconomy, labour intensity, biotic resource extraction productivity, share of bioeconomy, export intensity, and share of bioresource export. The main factors increasing biotic resource extraction were the growth in labour material intensity, biotic extraction productivity and export intensity. However, changes in these factors differed significantly among the countries studied and had different trajectories over time depending on overall performance of the economy. These differences should be taken into account when developing national bioeconomy strategies.