Identifying Key Sectors in the Iranian Economy: A Network Theoretical Approach

The purpose of this study is to determine the key sectors in the Iranian economy using the results of input-output tables for 1999. Considering the scarcity of resources in different countries, it is important to identify key sectors in different economies. Recognition of key sectors is one of the important subjects which help policy makers and economic planners to design appropriate policy. In the literature, there are several methods for determining key sectors both theoretically and empirically. One of the most novel and recent approaches is based on network theory. This method attributes different weights to both intermediate and final demand of sectors. In order to pinpoint those sectors whose positions are more significant in the economy, a definition of centrality measures is proposed from network theory. These complementary measures are total effects, meditative effects and immediate effects which considered as multilevel indicators. Total effects is the overall impact of the sector on the rest of the economy while immediate effects show the immediacy of the implementation of the total effects and finally the meditative effects indicate the role of certain sectors as transmission links of total effects produced by others.