The Evaluation and Comparison of the Regional Economic Activities Dispersion Using AFLQ and MFLQ Methods

AFLQ is a non-statistical method to derive the regional Input-Output table from the national one. Considering the costs and the time، it is the best method for extension of national input-output table to regional. AFLQ introduced by Flegg et al. have been evolved through time and confirmed by various tests but still have some defects. The main deficiency regards to its wrong evaluation of weak sectors، particularly، if a sector has a small locational ratio it is very likely to be determined as demand leading sector which have a dispersion index above one. The empirical AFLQ method results show that in the west-Azerbaijan region، as an example، an index above one is assigned to ten sectors out of its thirteen weak sectors. This study proposes a new MFLQ method to adjust weak sectors. The results show that the new MFLQ method does this job with fewer errors than AFLQ method.