Demographic - economic forecasting within an activity - commodity framework: some theoretical considerations and empirical results

This paper presents a methodology which allows demographic and economic forecasting models to be integrated in a consistent manner. By embedding a conventional static Leontief input - output model within an activity analysis framework, a number of interesting results are obtained. First, a new series of production, income, and employment multipliers is derived which offers considerable advantages over those currently in use. Second, partitioning the framework provides fresh insights into the complex relationships between demographic and economic variables. These developments in methodology are tested in a case study of Merseyside where an operational version of the framework is applied in a forecasting context.