ABSTRACT
Pollution is a by-product of regular economic activities. In each of its many forms it is related in a measurable way to some particular consumption: The quantity of carbon monoxide released in the air bears, for example, a definite relationship to the amount of fuel burned by various types of automotive engines. The discharge of polluted water into our streams and lakes is linked directly to the level of output of the steel, the paper, the textile, and all the other water-using industries, and its amount depends on particular industry. The technical interdependence between the levels of desirable and undesirable outputs can be described in terms of structural coefficients similar to those used to trace the structural interdependence between all the regular branches of production and consumption. Input-output analysis describes and explains the level of output of each sector of a given national economy in terms of its relationships to the corresponding levels of activities in all the other sectors.
