Political protests and their impacts on interdependent infrastructure systems

Political uncertainty and protests can influence any economy in many ways. Despite abundant scholarly literature on the economic impacts of political protests, not a single study investigated the impacts of such unlikely events on the entire economy using various sectors of the economy. The current work applies the inoperability input-output model (IIM) and dynamic inoperability input-output model (DIIM) to study the economic impacts of political protests in Pakistan from 14 August 2014 to 17 December 2014. The study calculates each sector's inoperability levels and economic losses using input-output tables for 25 sectors of the Pakistan economy. The study ranks all sectors based on their inoperability levels and economic losses and also provides the recovery period for each sector from the protests. The findings indicate that sectors having strong linkages with the manufacturing sector bear the highest economic losses. The research is helpful for the authorities to develop preventive measurements and recovery plans to minimise the economic losses in case of such unlikely events.