This paper provides a theoretical framework for the Rasmussen-Hirschman key sector analysis based on a minimum information approach. This approach introduces a separation of information about regional economic structure into two parts. In the first part, knowledge about economic structure, extracted on the basis of minimum information included in the row and column multipliers, is extracted from the Leontief inverse matrix. The second part presents the specifics of synergetic interactions between different sectors of the economy. A corresponding intensity matrix represents the strength of the fields of influence of simultaneous multiple changes. From this formulation, a minimum information decomposition of the Leontief inverse is shown to exist and applied to Chinese input-output tables for 1987 and 1990.Key Sectors, Minimum Information, Intensity Matrix, China,

The analysis of structural change with input–output (IO) tables is extended beyond the initial ideas of Chenery and Watanabe, and beyond the recent applications of Feldman et al. and Dewhurst, to embrace a more comprehensive view. With this perspective, change is decomposed into three initial components, and these components are further divided into change initiated within the sector and outside the sector. The analysis is then linked with the notion of a ‘field of influence of change’ to provide a more complete view of the way in which changes penetrate the rest of the economic system. The analytical perspectives are illustrated with applications to a three-sector set of IO tables for the US economy for the period 1948–77.Decomposition, field of influence, US economic change,

The metropolitan economy of Chicago has experienced a signijicant transformution in its economic structure over the past twenty years. Using a method f o r extraction of input-output tables that has been described elsewhere, it has been possible to produce an economic photograph of the changes in the Chicago region, annually, f o r the period 1975-2011. This paper explores the nature of these structural changes through examination of the changes in the composition of the Leontief multipliers and changes in the economic landscapes interpreted through application of the multiplier product matrix. The resulting picture, at the nine-sector level of detail, reveals a hollowing-out process, with intrametropolitan dependence replaced b y dependence on sources of supply and demand outside the region. Furthermore, the analysis reveals a complex internal transformation, as dependence on locally sourced manufacturing inputs is replaced b y dependence on local service activities.A great deal is known about the ways in which the macro structure of major metropolitan economies evolve; there is a voluminous body of literature devoted to the internal spatial reorganization of businesses, people, and land use [see the excellent theoretical discussion by Fujita (1989)], but little information has been assembled and evaluated on the processes of change associated with the interaction between sectors within an economy. The present paper explores some of these issues, drawing upon a recently developed model of the Chicago metropolitan economy to provide the empirical base upon which a number of conjectures and hypotheses about intrametropolitan structural evolution could be tested.In the next section, some of these hypotheses are developed, drawing on the small set of literature that has been oriented toward this problem. In the third section of the paper, a brief description of the Chicago model and the data

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