Input-Output Analysis of Water Consumption for Economic Development in Ningxia
宁夏国民经济用水投入产出分析

The I/0 analysis of regional macroeconomic water resources is a major component for the establishment of water planning and management targets. With an I/0 approach, it is possible to account for both direct and indirect effects on the supply and demand of water resources. The I/0 analysis is an effective method for water resources development and management. The prevailing method of macroeconomic water demand analysis in China is to calculate the direct water consumption coefficients of each sector, and then rank these sectors by their coefficients to derive sector priorities. The advantage of this approach is its simplicity and easy to be used by decision makers. Its weakness is that it cannot reveal the interaction among different economic sectors and does not provide overall and comprehensive conclusions for the marginal effects of the water input of each industry. The I/0 multiplier analysis could overcome those shortcomings. Due to water resource's non-profit peculiarity, the financial input-out sheet of water resource can't be directly constructed unless traditional financial input-output sheet and physical input-output sheet of water resource can be combined. With this approach, characteristics and interrelationship of water utilization in various sectors of local economy, as well as the influence of industrial structure on water demand and supply are studied in macro economy perspective. Therefore, problems deriving from water consuming economic activities are identified and countermeasures put forward.