Scottish input-output tables for 1979

Scotland, for the year 1973, were published in 1978, as a result of a collaborative effort between the Fraser of Allander Institute, the IBM Scientific Centre and the Scottish Council Research Institute. A second set of tables, for the year 1979, have been compiled by the Industry Department for Scotland (IDS) and the results have recently been published in a series of four special volumes. The compilation of input-output tables is a complex exercise which involves a substantial commitment of resources and time, which explains the long interval (nearly five years) between the base year of the tables and the publication of the results. The tables however reveal a great deal about the structure of the economy and have a wide range of applications. The next section of this paper explains what input-output tables are, while the following section summarises the main features of the Scottish tables for 1979. The last part of the paper outlines some applications of input-output models, and gives some examples of applications in the Scottish context