Course Description

We live in an increasingly interconnected world facilitated by growing international trade. The supply chain of products we consume spreads out across the world. The increasingly intensified globalization leads to the spatial separation of consumption and production, and thus the spatial separation of consumption and environmental impacts embodied in production. To understand the complex interdependence of consumption, production, trade, and the environment, input-output analysis (IOA) has been widely used to analyze environmental impacts embodied in consumption and trade.

The objective of this course is to introduce the IOA framework and its application in sustainability systems analysis. The first part of the course covers basic methodological issues in IOA, showing how basic economic IOA is linked with national accounts and environmental impacts. The second part of the course demonstrates how to apply basic IOA framework and its various modifications to examine environmental impacts embodied in consumption and trade.