Key sectors and structural change in the Brazilian economy: a comparsion of alternative approaches and their policy implications

Attempts to identify key sectors in an economy with input output models have been a source of considerable debate. in this paper; several old and new approaches to the problem are evaluated with reference to the Brazilian economy using the input-output models for 1959, 1970 and 1975. Two alternative approaches are suggested in this paper. The first of these focuses on key coefficients through the identification of fields of influence associated with changes in these coefficients, including the effects of simultaneous changes in more than one coefficient. The second approach decomposes the interindustry transactions into a set (hierarchy) of flows. It is claimed that the flows associated with the higher levels of the hierarchy can be considered as the key flows or most important transactions. These new approaches are compared to earlier techniques to examine the degree to which important changes in the economy could be detected.