Economic structure and pollution intensity within the environmental input–output framework

The environmental input–output approach reveals the channels through which the environmental burdens of production activities are transmitted throughout the economy. This paper uses the input–output framework and analyses the changes in Spanish emission multipliers during the period 1995–2000. By decomposing the total changes in multipliers into different components, it is possible to evaluate separately the effects of economic structure and pollution intensity captured by the environmental input–output model. Specifically, in this study, we distinguish between the effects on multipliers caused by changes in emission coefficients (the pollution intensity effects) and the effects on multipliers caused by changes in technical coefficients (the economic structure effects). Our results show a significant reduction in the pollution intensity of production activities, which contributed negatively to changes in emission multipliers. They also show that the economic structure contributed positively to changes in emission multipliers. Together, these two effects lead to a small reduction in multipliers during the period of analysis. My results also show significant differences in the individual behaviour of different sectors in terms of their contribution to multiplier changes. Since there are considerable differences in the way individual sectors affect the changes in emission levels, and in the intensity of these effects, this means that the final effects will basically depend on the activity considered.