Fields of Influence of Productivity Change in EU Intercountry Input—Output Tables, 1970–80

The potential influence of changes in productivity is explored for each sector in each country on the intercountry Leontief-inverse of the European Union (EU) for two time periods, 1970 and 1980. The methodology employed is a weighted variant of the field of influence of column change; the empirical outcomes will be analyzed in three ways. First, the impact of comparable changes in productivity in every sector will be estimated in terms of its contribution to the aggregate value of the Leontief-inverse as well as on its spatial structure. From this estimation, propulsive sectors are identified as those sectors that produce the largest increase in the overall interdependence between all sectors in all EU-countries. Moreover, the propulsiveness of sectors will be spatially decomposed into four components: a ‘domestic’ effect, an ‘intercountry-spillover’, an ‘intercountry-return’, and a ‘rest of the EU’ effect on sectoral interdependence. Second, the analysis will examine how the columns of the intercountry Leontief inverse would change as a consequence of EU-wide changes in technology. This process will enable the identification of ‘reactive’ sectors, those sectors whose multipliers are most sensitive to EU-wide factor productivity increases. Third, the rows of the intercountry Leontief-inverse are considered in terms of their changes as a consequence of EU-wide changes in productivity. This approach identifies ‘dependent’ sectors, those sectors whose production level is most sensitive to overall changes in productivity within the EU.