The Topology of Inter-industry Relations from the Portuguese National Accounts

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the structure of Portuguese inter-industry relations using network topology derived from national output tables, revealing significant structural changes during the economic adjustment period of 2011-2014.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network-based approach to study inter-industry relations from output tables, highlighting structural changes during economic adjustment.

Findings

Identifies a significant structural change in 2011-2014

Demonstrates the effectiveness of network analysis for economic structural studies

Confirms the usefulness of output-based similarity networks

Abstract

In last years, the Portuguese economy has gone through a severe adjustment process, affecting almost all industrial sectors, the building blocks of economic structures. Research on economic structural changes has made use of input/output tables to define networks of industrial relations. Here, these networks are induced from output tables of the Portuguese national accounting system, being each inter-industry relation defined by the output made by any two industries for the products that they both produce. The topological analysis of these networks allows to uncover a particular structure that comes out during the Portuguese adjustment program. The evolution of the industrial networks shows an important structural change in 2011-2014, confirming the usefulness of inducting similarity networks from output tables and the consequent promising power of the graph formulation for the analysis of inter-industry relations.