Accounting for value added embodied in trade and consumption: an intercomparison of global multiregional input–output databases

ABSTRACT

Global multiregional input–output (MRIO) tables constitute detailed accounts of the economic activity worldwide. Global trade models based on MRIO tables are being used to calculate important economic and environmental indicators such as value added in trade or the carbon footprint of nations. Such applications are highly relevant in international trade and climate policy negotiations, and consequently MRIO model results are being scrutinized for their accuracy and reproducibility. We investigate the variation in results from three major MRIO databases by comparing underlying economic data and territorial and consumption-based results across databases. Although global value-added accounts were similar across databases, we find some significant differences at the level of individual countries and sectors. Model disagreement was relatively stable from the territorial to the consumption perspective. Pairwise matrix comparison statistics indicated that the Global Trade Analysis Project and World Input-Output Database MRIO tables were overall more similar to each other than either was to the Eora database.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiregional input–output tables
• MRIO comparison
• Eora
• GTAP
• WIOD

Acknowledgements

This work was performed while KSO and AO were visiting the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹We use version 8 of GTAP (Narayanan et al., 2012). Note that the original GTAP database does not include an MRIO table; however, one can readily be constructed from it (Peters et al., 2011).

²This is the standard deviation divided by the mean.

³The OECD has published MRIO tables as part of their trade in value added (TiVA) database, see http://www.oecd.org/sti/ind/tiva/tivasourcesandmethods.htm

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) under its Discovery Projects DP0985522 and DP130101293. The contribution from AO and JB formed part of the program of the UK Energy Research Centre and was supported by the UK Research Councils under Natural Environment Research Council award NE/G007748/1. DG would like to thank funding from Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number 2012Y1ZB0001] and Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71250110083].