A Comparative Evaluation of the Sub-sectors' Linkages of Iran's Economy in the Last Five Decades: The Hybrid Approach of Input-Output Tables and Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC)

In this paper, the hybrid modeling of Input-Output framework and MICMAC technique have been used to evaluates the inter-sectoral interactions between all sectors and activities of Iran’s economy based on the statistics aggregate Input-Output tables for five periods from 1973 to 2011. The main 15 sectors are elaborated and the results of the interactions were used to extract sectoral priorities and to analyze the influence intensity and inter-sectoral interdependency. The results imply that the “fishing and aquaculture “sector has been autonomous in all the five periods and the “industry” sector, as the most sensitive sector of Iran’s economy, has been always a linkage sector so that the smallest changes in it, will lead to a chain effect changes in other sectors of the economy. Other sectors have various behavior during different periods. In other words, they have shown linkage, autonomous, dependent and independent nature. According to research policy results, policymakers can focus on industry sector with a linkage nature as a turning point related to backward linkages and forward linkages, in order to achieve development and extension of supply chain, and identify the more flexible sectors of Iran's economy in terms of structure according to MICMAC results, and plan to make structural changes to the Iranian economy.