The Economic Impacts of Newly Irrigated Areas in the Ebro Valley

This paper uses regional input-output tables to analyse the long-term impact resulting from the implementation of the newly irrigated areas provided for under the terms of the Ebro Basin Hydrological Plan. We have described the whole process by way of two consecutive stages. In the first, where the final demand is fixed, we use a demand-driven input-output model and we incorporate technical change through the reduction of the coefficients. In the second, the output of all sectors increases, with the increases in the vector of output being proportional to the forward linkages vector of the Agriculture sector. In this stage, our objective is to obtain a final demand vector that ensures that the agricultural value added increases to a prescribed value of v 1 *. Whilst the results demonstrate the positive effects of the transformation, they also reveal effects of a very different character in each sector. Thus, the Agriculture, Livestock and Agri-food industry sectors show significant increases in their gross outputs caused by the forward effects, whilst the Energy, Metal and Chemicals sectors reduce their outputs. These results shed light on the contradictory nature of the processes of development and technical change.